Hate is A Powerful Thing
by MostEvilKitten
Summary: WIP, AU. Explore Harry's dark, slytherin side. Slash (implied), drugs, torture and other viloence
1. Prologue: Surrounding Darkness

"Why am I so different?  
  
Why can't I be like everybody else?  
  
While everyone is playing,  
  
I am hiding from myself.  
  
Why can't I love?  
  
Why can't I kiss?  
  
I want to touch,  
  
and know tenderness.  
  
Why can't I laugh?  
  
Why can't I smile?  
  
I wanted to be like everybody else;  
  
At least once in a while"  
  
-J. L. Chapin "Unanswered Questions  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is A Powerful Thing  
  
Prologue: Surrounding Darkness  
  
By: MostEvilKitten  
  
The room was dark, so dark that you couldn't see your hand even if you put it right in front of your face. He didn't like it at first, because he loved the outdoors. He loved to see the sun and smell the air, but now everything was different. He liked being in the dark. This way he didn't have to look at his own face and the feeling of guilt wouldn't be there, although, he still felt guilty all the time. The days blended together and he had no idea what the date was.   
  
Was it a Monday? A Friday? Was it still July or is it August? Did he miss his birthday? The questions flew around in his mind, but he didn't really care about the answer.   
  
Soon enough everyone would be at school and find out that he was missing, then they would come to find him, but did he want to go back? He didn't know. Seeing those faces again, the faces of his friends, fellow students and teacher would be too hard for him, because he would always see the pity in there eyes, even if they tried to hide it, it would still be there. He didn't want anyone's pity, he didn't deserve it, he was a killer, a murderer, and their pity was wasted on him.  
  
Why couldn't they all see that he was a murderer? That he killed that poor boy Cedric. He didn't say the curse that killed him, but he had told Cedric to take the cup with him. He was noble and was going to share the victory with Cedric, but his nobility got Cedric killed. Damn his Gryffindor nobility. If he had listened to that damned sorting hat none of this would have happened. He wouldn't have been noble and asked Cedric to take the cup with him, Cedric would still be there, and he would have probably be the only one to died.   
  
He actually wanted to die now, so that all the pain would stop and he would be with his parents, like he always wanted to be, but no he was still among the living, and innocent lives weren't being destroyed all because of him.  
  
The worst thing was that no one saw him as a murderer. No one would punish him for being the murderer he was, no one except his Uncle. His Uncle saw him for who he really was, a freak. He was a freak and a murderer and not worthy of any of the things that were given to him through out the years.   
  
His Uncle was the one who put him in this dark room. It was actually his old room, before his Uncle boarded up the window so that no light could come into the room from the outside. Then his Uncle locked up the door from the outside so that he could go out into the rest of the house. In the beginning there was a small amount of light that came under the door, and he could see a couple of things around the room, but after a week his Uncle found out and put something underneath the door so that the light didn't come in any more.   
  
The only time he ever saw any light was when his Uncle gave him his daily food, which consisted of a single cup of water and four slices of bread, with a small slices of meat, and when it was time for his 'punishment'. His 'punishment' was always the same. His Uncle would come into the room and turn on the light. His room was extremely bare, the only thing in his room was the bed and a single blanket, which was old and very thin, the light, which was only turned on during his 'punishment', was bare as well.   
  
When his Uncle came into the room he would always find him sitting in the same corner of the room curled up into a ball staring into nothing. The boy only wore a pair of his cousins old sweat pants, which hung off him, they are ridiculously big on the boy, and even his glasses were taken away from him.  
  
His Uncle would come into the room, usually drunk, and beat him repeatedly, until he was satisfied that the boy was properly punished. The beatings consisted mostly of his Uncle's favorite belt to his back, which would leave scars, like he didn't have enough scars already. Sometimes his Uncle would like to burn him with a cigarette.   
  
His Uncle had recently taking up smoking just so that he could put out each cigarette on the boy's arms. He had long forgotten what it felt like not to be in pain, and now he was even numb to the burns of the cigarettes, which pissed his Uncle off even more. Every time the boy forgot to wince in pain, so had his Uncle would be satisfied, his Uncle would get mad and start kicking and hitting him. He knew that he had multiple burses, a broken right arm and wrist, two broken ribs, and a twisted ankle from what his Uncle had done to him, but his Uncle was only harming him physically. The mental harm was someone else's department.  
  
That area belonged to a dark wizard named, Voldemort. Every night, that he exactly spelt, he would dream of Voldemort and whatever torture he was giving out that night. He would watch as each innocent life was destroyed and lost to the monster, which he helped bring back to life.   
  
It wasn't enough that he watched the torture of the innocents. No! He had to feel it as well, so it was just another torture session for him, as Voldemort would use the pain curse on yet another innocent Muggle he would feel it as well, maybe not to its full potential, but he would fell it nonetheless.  
  
This was the way it was, night after night, for nearly two months.   
  
This is what it was like being him, being the Boy-Who-Lived, being Harry Potter, the freak, the murderer, the one who brought back Voldemort.   
  
This is what it was like, being a Gryffindor, with his nobility.  
  
This is what it was like, being the savior of the wizarding world.  
  
He knew he deserved every single blow his Uncle gave him, but somewhere in the back of his mind he wanted something more, something better. He wanted to be loved, like he was never loved as a child. He wanted to be happy, like he hadn't been happy since his second year at Hogwarts. He wanted friends and guardians who actually cared for him, because if his friends actually cared he wouldn't have gone back to his relative that summer, he would have had a happy summer, and not one full of pain and torture, but then again he was a murderer, and this is what he deserved.  
  
His friend must of known that and that is why he was still there at his relatives, and that was the reason why he didn't deserved them as friends. They were all too good for him, this freak.  
  
He knew he deserved this, but he also knew that if he didn't get out of this house soon that he would die, and death was too good for him. He was making plans to get out, to run away. To leave the wizarding world behind and go, but little did he know that someone else was planning his escape, one that he wouldn't want, one that the wizarding world would regret years and years from now. 


	2. Chapter One: Our Potions Master

What am I going to do without you?  
  
How am I going to be happy again?  
  
Your smile was like the morning sun,  
  
Your eyes were like the stars in the night sky,  
  
But now you are gone and  
  
All the stars have disappeared from the sky,  
  
And now the sun's warmth is cold to me.  
  
I sit around all day staring into the darkness.  
  
You were my light, but now the light has died.  
  
Everything that was once beautiful  
  
Now only is used to decorate your grave.  
  
I lay and sleep  
  
Now I leave this world.  
  
The world that brought you such joy  
  
Only gave me sadness  
  
In a cold, dark, silent world  
  
Nothing is beautiful,  
  
Nothing is joyful  
  
Nothing is the same  
  
-MostEvilKitten "Nothing is the Same"  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is A Powerful Thing  
  
Chapter One: Our Potions Master  
  
By: MostEvilKitten  
  
Severus Snape, Potions Master of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, ex-death eater, and current spy against Voldemort for Dumbledore and his secret Order against the Dark Lord, the Order of the Phoenix, was busy in his dungeon making some more healing potions for Madam Pomfrey yet again. He had used up the entire stock of potion that counteracted the Cruico curse for the second time that month, and the school nurse was in need of more.  
  
Professor Snape was not having the best of summers. Being a spy had its downfalls, especially when you were spying against Voldemort. Voldemort was the darkness wizard seen in centuries, and most people feared to speak his name, but Snape had to actually be in his presents.  
  
Voldemort didn't look as bad as he did when he was seen by Harry Potter at the rebirth ritual a couple of months before. He now looked like any other human; in fact he looked like he did when he was thirty, all except for his eyes.  
  
His eyes were blood red in color, and looked like a pair of snake eyes. They were once green like Harry Potter's, in fact, Voldemort, when he was Tom Riddle, looked exactly like Harry Potter at that age, or so everyone says, which disturbed Snape a bit. The boy looked exactly like the Dark Lord when he was young, and that couldn't be good thing. Snape had been thinking long and hard over this. Harry looked like the Dark Lord and they both had the same ability to speak to snakes, they both were orphaned when they were young. What other things did they have in common? Was Harry really a dark lord in the making? Well Voldemort thought so.  
  
That was the reason Snape had been to this last Death Eater meeting. They were discussing how Voldemort was going to go about capturing the ebony haired boy. Severus was shaken when he found out that Voldemort had found out where the boy was living. The only good thing that he found out from the meeting was that Voldemort didn't know how to get past the many powerful wards that Dumbledore had put up around the boy's relative's house.  
  
Dumbledore had placed wards around the Dursley's house to protect the boy since even before the boy was ever there, and they were complex wards using old magic that he hadn't even heard of before he researched them after the Headmaster talk about them one day to the transfiguration professor, Minvera McGonagall.  
  
These wards are very hard to break down, even for someone as strong as Voldemort, and the Death Eaters have been failing since Voldemort first told them to get the boy from his relative's house over a month ago, when the summer holidays started. Voldemort had asked Severus to try and find out actually which wards were around the house, but Severus couldn't get the old man to tell him, or so he told Voldemort.  
  
Actually Severus knew exactly which wards where up around the house and how to get around them. In fact he wanted to go and get the boy out of that house as fast as possible, but he had to wait. Why? He didn't know. He had told Dumbledore about Voldemort knowing where Harry was and that he was looking for ways around the wards, but the Headmaster told him that he would have to wait until the end of July in order to take the boy out of the house.  
  
Severus hated waiting, he was never a patient person and he had a sneaky suspicion that the old man was cooking up some plan that Severus was going to regret, but there was nothing that he could do. He was just another one of Dumbledore's pawns in this war, just like the boy, and he had to do whatever the Headmaster said, because Dumbledore had both of their lives in his hands.  
  
He respected the Headmaster for some of the things that he as done in the past, but in his later years he man had started to go a little crazy and get very manipulative. Make no mistake, Albus Dumbledore was always manipulative, hell he got Severus to be a spy even after the rebirth, but lately it was worst. He was a grown man and knew that he was being manipulated, but he was playing with the lives of children.  
  
He had been playing with Harry's life since the boy was one and his parents were killed, but Severus had another sneaky suspicion that the old man had been planning the boy's life long before that. If that was the case then he really didn't want to know what the older man had actually planed for Harry, but something was telling Severus that it wasn't something that he would like, just like what the old man had planed for Lily, his Lily.  
  
Severus Snape had loved Lily. Yes, Severus could love someone. He wasn't always the greasy bastard that walked the halls of Hogwarts. He was once kind of nice to people, but after people took his Lily away from him; he began to get biter and hate life. Lily was the first person he met on the train to Hogwarts.  
  
No one, not even Lucius Malfoy, could tell that she was a Muggle-born just by talking to her. She seemed as pureblood as even the Malfoys, but Severus had never cared about the purity of blood, even through his family tried to drill it into him. It just didn't seem important to him, especially when it came to his Lily. She was the most beautiful person he had ever seen and the most loving person as well.  
  
She was the type of person who tried to see the person behind all the masks they put up to hide themselves from the world and anything that might hurt them. Severus had tried to get her to give up on him. He wasn't worth anyone's time and effort to get to know, but she ever gave up on him, that was the first time that he felt friendship like that. She was his first true friend that he had, and he loved her, more than just a friend or even a sister. He loved her like a man loves a woman, but their love was never suppose to be. Fate, and Dumbledore were too cruel to let him be happy.  
  
He and Lily had actually gone out, albeit in secret, in their sixth year, but something happened, and Dumbledore and the Marauders found of about it. The next day Lily came to him with tears in her eyes and told him that they had to stop seeing each other. She never told him why she broke off their relationship, but he had a feeling that it had something to do with Dumbledore and his pet Gryffindors.  
  
It wasn't long after Lily broke off their relationship that she started seeing James Potter, but he knew that that relationship was a sham, because Lily never really liked that infamous Gryffindor. Severus knew this because Lily used to tell him how they would never leave her alone and James in particular was always asking her to go on a date with him.  
  
She would tell Severus that James was arrogant, because he was the bloody Golden Boy of Gryffindor and the Headmaster's favorite little pet. If you were in Gryffindor and went against James Potter and the Marauders it was like being a Muggle-lover and in Slytherin. Life would get very hard, so to everyone who didn't know what exactly was going on, James and Lily were the perfect couple. They loved each other and all that garbage, but Severus knew better. He knew that Lily was the best actress he had ever seen, because she had even those fool best friends of James, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin and sometimes he was sure that she even had James, himself, fooled.  
  
The day that they were married was the day that he became a Death Eater. He was so angry with Dumbledore and those fool Marauders for taking his Lily away from him that it drove him to Voldemort, the promise of power and anything else he would want.  
  
The day that he heard the plot against Lily and James' life was the day that he became a spy. When he heard Voldemort talking about letting Malfoy rape his beautiful flower, he had gotten so angry that he cursed Malfoy with his first Unforgivable. After the meeting with Voldemort he and Lucius went out for drinks. Malfoy sat there in front of him and talked about exactly how he was going to make the Mudblood scream. It made Severus so mad that he used the Cruico curse on the elder Malfoy. When anyone questioned him about it later he would say that he wanted to be the one to make her scream, which was true in a way just not in pain (A/N: hehe), but he would never admit that part.  
  
After that day he was Dumbledore's spy against Voldemort. When Lily died he mourned more than anyone, because the only person he had ever loved was gone, leaving only a child that should have been his and Lily's, but it wasn't. He made a silent promise to Lily the day she died to protect her son, like he could never protect her. He would watch after Harry as best he could, but for the first eleven years he couldn't get close to the boy. He wanted to check up on him, but there were to many wards around the house and he would be detected if he got to close.  
  
Now that the Death Eaters knew where the boy lived, he was in danger, even if Voldemort wanted the boy alive. He knew how over-jealous some of the Death Eaters were and that they would sometimes read more into the order than they should. They probably would think that Voldemort wanted the boy so that he could torture and eventually kill him, but in truth no one really knew what the Dark Lord wanted with the boy.  
  
So he was going to have to watch Harry closely. Watch the child of the lovely flower that he had lost. When Harry had come to Hogwarts looking like James, but having Lily's beautiful green eyes, it was like someone put the Cruico curse on him and then kicked him in the stomach.  
  
He knew he was being unfair to Lily's son when he would make funny and put him down, but it truly hurt Severus. He wouldn't go so far as to wish any true harm on the boy, and that was making him so anxious lately. The boy was in danger with just being at his relative's house, so why was everyone just sitting around waiting for Voldemort to get the boy.  
  
He was thinking this over while he was making the healing potions for Madam Pomfrey. No, it was more like an internal argument. Part of him wanted to go that very moment to get the boy, but part of him, the part that was the spy, was telling him to listen to the Headmaster. He must have a good reason to keep him there.  
  
With a heavy sigh he bottled the potions and headed towards the hospital wing still having the argument with himself. He was stalking through the halls heading for the hospital wing when he heard someone talking in the hall just ahead of him. It sounded as if they were heading his way. Not wanting to be noticed by anyone at the moment he carefully hid in the shadows of the halls and waited for whoever it was to pass.  
  
As the voices got closer he could tell that there were two people arguing about something. By the sound of their voices they were both students, but what were two students doing at Hogwarts during the summer holidays. When the two students came into view he was surprised to see Weasley and Granger arguing and heading for the Headmaster's office. Well maybe not surprised about the arguing part, but what were they doing at Hogwarts any ways? He was about to ask them when he heard Weasley speak.  
  
"But Hermione he hasn't answered any of our owls." Said Ron and Severus' eyebrow arched in interest.  
  
"Maybe he is just out and hasn't gotten them Ron." Replied Hermione trying to find some logical answer. "Besides if Harry was in trouble the Headmaster would know and get Harry out of there." With that Ron stopped only feet away from where Snape stood listening.  
  
"But Hermione Harry doesn't tell anyone about that kind of thing. You know how he gets when people worry over him like that. You know he hates his fame." Snape laughed mentally at the thought.  
  
'Sure the boy didn't like his fame and Dumbledore wasn't an old manipulative bastard!' thought Snape.  
  
"I know Ron, but Dumbledore wouldn't let Harry go back to the Dursley's if he was in danger there." Said Hermione.  
  
"I know 'Mione, but I am just worried. You know that his family doesn't like him, because he is a wizard. I mean the summer before second year they put bars over his windows and locked him in his room without any food, and that he lived in the cupboard under the stairs for the first eleven years of his live." Said Ron and Snape's head jerked up at this.  
  
'Could the boys family be that vile?'  
  
"I mean Hermione Harry got his Hogwarts letter and it was addressed to him, in his cupboard under the stairs. That means someone must of know that he was living like that. That room is so small 'Mione, I have seen it while I was there last year getting him to come to the Burrow. That is another reason why I am worried."  
  
"Why is that Ron?" Hermione asked, she had forgotten.  
  
"Don't you remember us telling you 'Mione. You remember Fred and George's stupid little joke don't you. They gave Harry's cousin one of their joke candies. It made that fat cousin of his tongue blowup. I mean it was funny at the time, but what do you think his Aunt and Uncle will do to him as punishment for that, 'Mione? That's why I am so worried!" Ron finished and Hermione looked pale.  
  
"Oh Merlin, Ron, I wasn't thinking about that." Snape smirked at Hermione as she admitted that she didn't think about something, but his smirk quickly disappeared into a worried expression with this new information. Now not only was Voldemort a threat to Harry, but there was his own family and the abuse, if not physical but mental abuse, that he was taking.  
  
'Mordrid, what was Dumbledore doing to this child.' Thought Snape, because he knew the wards around the house and what things they alerted the Headmaster to and abuse of any sort including that from his family would be known, so the Headmaster must have known if the boy's family was starving him or even hitting him. That was the reason why he thought the boy had such a pampered life.  
  
He never thought the Headmaster would willingly let the boy's own family to treat the Golden Boy of Gryffindor like that, but obviously the old man was more sadistic than he thought.  
  
'Mordrid! I have to do something even if the Headmaster says no!' Snape concluded and as the two students went off to the Headmaster's office Snape quickly went to the hospital wing and dropped off the potions before getting what he needed to rescue Harry.  
  
He had to think quickly. If the boy was indeed being mentally abused this would be really bad, not just for the boy's health, but there are reasons why dark wizards become dark. One of the most powerful reasons is because they were abused as children. This was the reason why he was sorted into the Slytherin House. Severus had a very abusive father and found out that he wasn't alone when he got to Hogwarts.  
  
It seemed like everyone in the Slytherin House were abused as children in one form or another. This was a little known fact to everyone outside of Slytherin, except for a couple of the Professors who had heard the stories told to them by the portraits. This was the reason why sorting the children into the correct houses were so important, especially for the ones who were to be sorted into Slytherin.  
  
The Slytherin House was more of a support group and protection to the members of the house. They knew what it was like to be in pain and the way the other Slytherins thought. If a person who was suppose to be sorted into Slytherin was sorted into another house, say Gryffindor, he or she would not get the support that they needed, and would most times come every self destructive. They were known to been suicidal; this was the thing most on Snape's mind as he was heading for the road to Hogsmeade just outside Hogwarts grounds and the Apparating wards. As he was leaving the grounds he heard a very upset Hermione speak.  
  
"Ron he said that Harry is fine." She said trying to control a sob.  
  
"But it isn't like him not to answer our letters. I don't see why he won't let us take Harry to the Burrow." Ron said and there was a long moment of silence before Ron spoken again. "I just have a bad feeling 'Mione. Something's wrong."  
  
"I know, Ron, I know." Was the last thing Snape heard from the two Gryffindors before Apparating away. He reappeared just outside of the Apparating wards around the Dursley's. Then he very carefully made his way around the wards protecting the boy. The house was dark, as the sun had gone down while he was making his way around the wards undetected. He silently made his way into the house when he closed the door he stood in the entryway for a moment listening to what was happening in the house. Everything was quiet telling him that the Dursley's were out.  
  
Snape quietly walked up the stairs. The first door that he opened seemed to be an empty master bedroom, the next room was a spare bedroom, then there was a bathroom and a rather large room full of toys and other things that Snape would have thought that this was Harry's room, but then he saw the last door in the hall. There were five different locks on the outside of the door, as if to keep something or someone inside the room. On a hook outside the room was a ring of five keys that he could only guess was the keys to unlock the door. Not wanting to alert anyone to his presents by using magic to open the door.  
  
When he opened the door he was met with black. He could see anything more than a few feet into the room, but he could hear a weak voice whispering on the other side of the room. The voice was repeating something over and over again. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I'll be good."  
  
"Harry?" called Snape. The only answer he got was the repeating chant. Worried, his hand went to the wall next to the door, in order to turn the light on in the room. When the light switched on he was blind for a moment before his eyes got used to the light. "BY THE GODS!" gasped Snape at what he saw. He had to get Harry out of this hell, now, before anyone came. Seeing that the house was clear of anyone, who would stop him, he set to work. 


	3. Chapter Two: I am his Bloody Godfather

With this candle burning bright;  
  
protect these babes all through the light.  
  
Keep them save as they sleep;  
  
and peaceful dreams in their minds keep.  
  
-MostEvilKitten "The Prayer"  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is A Powerful Thing  
  
Chapter Two: I am his bloody Godfather!  
  
By: MostEvilKitten  
  
Sirius Black was worried. No! He was panicked. He was on a mission for Dumbledore, and his secret order against Voldemort, when he got a letter from Ron telling him that Harry wasn't responding to anyone's letters. He hadn't known Harry for too long, but he knew that this was something to worry about. That was why he was sitting in the living room at the Burrow talking with Molly and Arthur Weasley about what they were going to do about Harry. It was Sirius' opinion as well as the opinion of all of the Weasleys that Harry should have gone straight to the Burrow from Hogwarts, but Dumbledore had said that he was to go to the Dursley's.  
  
"Sirius, you know how much I want that boy here with us, so that he could get some proper treatment, but Albus wants him to stay with his Aunt and Uncle at least for the beginning of the summer." Said Arthur Weasley.  
  
"I know Arthur, but what if they aren't treating him good." Sirius sat on the couch with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. "Arthur what if they are starving him again? What if they locked him in his room and not letting him go outside?" There was a long pause where Sirius' shoulders shook in a silent sob. "Arthur?" his voice was shaking. "What if they are hurting him? I don't think I could take if they hurt my godson."  
  
"Sirius." Molly said in her most motherly voice as she sat down next to him and put her hand on his back. "Harry is probably just fine. He is probably out having fun with the other kids in the neighborhood and wasn't there when the owls came." Molly tried her best to sound like she actually believed what she was saying, but her voice wavered a little and Sirius noticed.  
  
"Molly, I am not a little kid. You don't have to put up a brave face for me. I know that you are just as worried about him as I am." Sirius said and with that Molly's eyes started to tear up.  
  
"Oh you're right Sirius. I am not just worried about him. I am scared for him. I mean after what happened in the final task of that bloody tournament, and the way that he was so upset. I don't know Sirius. I just hope that he doesn't do anything stupid." Molly said. Sirius hadn't even thought about that particular thing. Was Harry capable of hurting himself, or even trying to kill himself? He didn't know and that was another thing that he kicked himself for.  
  
He was the boy's Godfather and he didn't know if he was capable of killing himself. He didn't know if the boy was hurting himself or was depressed. He was supposed to be looking out for Harry and he couldn't even get near the house that he lived in. How could he call himself Harry's Godfather?  
  
"I am sorry, Sirius, I upset you even more." Said Molly as she wiped the tears from her eyes. All Sirius could do was lift his head and smile at her with a bittersweet smile that made her soul ache. She was about to open her mouth to say something else but there was a noise that came from the kitchen, alerting her that dinner was yet. "Well dinner is ready and Sirius you are staying here tonight." Sirius went to protest, but she stopped him. "No I will not have you arguing with me. You are simply to upset to do anything, so you are having dinner with us and stay the night on the couch. We will see Albus in the morning."  
  
Sirius nodded at her and followed her into the kitchen with Arthur close behind him. They sat down at the table as Molly called up for the kids to come down stairs. Fred and George ran into the room a second later. Ginny and Percy walked down the stair calmly. The six Weasleys plus Sirius sat waiting for Ron and Hermione to came into dinner. Molly called for them a couple more times before she sent the twins up to get them. A couple of minutes later the twin came back down to tell their mother that the two younger teenagers were not up stairs at all.  
  
"Where can those two be?" she asked, her voice was worried. She got up to look for them when they heard a noise from the living room, and a moment later in came Ron and Hermione covered in soot. "And where did you two get off to?" The two teenagers looked at each other with sadden expressions before turning to the slightly angry older woman.  
  
"We went to see the Headmaster." Said Ron shyly.  
  
"You did what!" exclaimed Molly. "I thought I told you not to bother the Headmaster, and that your father and I would deal with it tomorrow."  
  
"You did mom." Said Ron. "We were just so worried about Harry that we went to see him, but he told just that Harry has to stay at his Aunt and Uncle's until after his birthday."  
  
"Harry shouldn't have to be at that horrible place on his birthday!" said Hermione. She was obviously upset about the whole Harry situation that she was yelling and crying. Molly, being the mother figure to everyone that knew her, went over to the teenaged girl and gathered her into a large hug.  
  
"It will be okay dear. Arthur, Sirius and myself will go see the Headmaster tomorrow and see if we can't sort this thing out." Molly said in a comforting voice. "We will have Harry at this table by tomorrow night, you'll see." She smiled at the two teens and motioned them to the table. The rest of dinner was eaten in silence.  
  
When they all finished eating all of the children went up stairs to their respective rooms the three adults stayed down stairs in the kitchen. The three of them sat together in silence thinking about things. Sirius sat at the kitchen table with his elbows on it and his chin in his hand. He was worried about Harry and Molly could see it in his expression.  
  
"Sirius, I know you are worried. We all are."  
  
"I know Molly. Its just that I have a really bad feeling that something is really wrong and it is getting worst by the minute." Sirius' voice was anxious. Molly knew what he meant, because she was feeling the exactly same thing. It was like a cold hand was settling over their hearts and was closing its fingers every passing minute.  
  
"I know how you feel Sirius." Said Molly and she got up and started to pace the kitchen. "But he told the children that we can't go get Harry." There was a long pause and then Molly spoke again. "Maybe we can go and talk some reason into Albus and we can have Harry home by breakfast."  
  
Sirius looked up at Molly and there was a twinkle of hope in his eyes. "Yes lets go talked to Dumbledore." Soon after all three adults were assembled by the fireplace with Floo powder in hand ready to head to the headmasters office. Then one by one they disappeared with a flash of light.  
  
A couple of minutes later the three of them were standing in front of the headmaster's desk. Albus Dumbledore sat behind the desk and looked up at the three of them through his half moon shaped glasses.  
  
"I was accepting you three to visit me, but I am sorry to tell you the same thing I told the two children earlier today. Harry must stay at his relative's until his birthday and then he will be able to come to the Burrow." Albus said in a calm voice.  
  
"Albus I have to see him and know that he is okay or I think that I might go out of my mind." Sirius said as he rushed forward.  
  
"Sirius my dear boy, I assure you that Harry is fine, if he wasn't then the wards around his house would alert me to anything." He said and motioned to a room at the back of his office where he had alarms for the wards around the Dursley's house.  
  
"Professor?" Sirius said in a pleading voice. "Do you think I can look at the wards? Just so that I can have some peace of mind." Dumbledore smiled at him.  
  
"Sure my dear boy you can." The two men went into the other room leaving Arthur and Molly out in the office. When Sirius got into the room he noticed that there were bells of all shapes and sizes floating around the room, each bell was glowing a different color, in order for a person to tell actually which ward it was connected to. "As you can see Sirius, everything is fine and there is no need for worry."  
  
Sirius breathed a breath of relief when he saw the glowing bells and that the wards were still around the house and that they weren't going off. He smiled and nodded at the Headmaster, then as he was heading out the door went something stopped him.  
  
A sudden chill went up his spine as he stopped in the doorway. He made eye contact with Molly whose face suddenly twisted into a horrified expression as she looked passed him into the room where a single bell had gone off and then as quick as it went off it was silenced. Sirius turned around to find that the bells were not glowing any more, all except three wards, one to tell them Harry was still alive, one for Apparating and one ward that only let people, would didn't want to harm anyone who lived in the house, past.  
  
"By the gods." Breathed Albus. "The wards are down. We have to get to Harry immediately." The four rushed out of the Headmaster's office, out onto the grounds and just outside the Apparating ward. A good ten minutes after they left the headmaster's office they were standing at the end of Privet Drive, just outside the Apparating ward and they started running for the house when they saw a cloaked and hooded figure on the other end of the drive. The figure was carrying the small body of a boy. Sirius looked at the boy and his breath caught in his throat when he saw a small lighten bolt scar on his forehead.  
  
"HARRY!" yelled Sirius as a starting sprinting as fast as he could toward the figure, but before Sirius got to far he ran straight into a wards and was thrown backwards. Landing on his back he got the breath knocked out of him, but still he sat up just in time to watch the cloaked figure disappear with a pop before darkness surrounded his vision and he fainted.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Severus had turned on the light with a blinding flash. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the new light and when they did he wished that he never turned the damn light on. His hand automatically went to his mouth as his eyes wondered over this horrible scene. The first thing he noticed was the smell. Everything smelt of death, blood, torture and stale sex. The room was mostly bare and the windows were boarded up allowing no light to come in from the outside. The only piece of furniture in the room was a bed with an old bare mattress. On top of the bed lay a rather old and small blanket that had many holes in it. The carpet which notice was in the room was gone, leaving only the wooden floor, but there was something wrong with the floor.  
  
On the floor there where places that were discolored as if there had been pools of blood just laying around and let dry without even cleaning them up. But that couldn't he right? Could it?  
  
His eyes swept across the room another time, but he couldn't see the boy anywhere. It wasn't has if the boy, if he really was here, had anywhere to hide. Then he heard the weak voice chant the verse again. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I'll be good."  
  
It was coming from the other side of the bed. Severus took a deep breath and gathered his courage. He really didn't want to look. He knew something was terribly wrong and all his instincts told him to go, to run away and not look back. This wasn't his concern.  
  
It wasn't like this was his child. In fact this was James' child, the person that took his Lily away from him, so who care if the James' clone died, he didn't. Did he? Well he didn't care that James had died, but Lily.  
  
"Oh Lily give me strength." Severus said a whispered prayer has he walked forward towards the bed. His eyes carefully watching the floor around the bed to see whoever it was, but as he was rounding the bed he stopped suddenly, as the weak voice had just as sudden stopped. This made Severus start to panic, and then he noticed something, which made him panic even more. Blood! A gathering pool of blood seemed to stretch out towards him.  
  
It was coming from the side of the bed where the weak voice stopped only moments before. With a rush of adrenaline to his body, he jumped over the corner of the bed to find a rather small ebony haired boy curled up into a ball on the floor next to the bed. The boy was covered in blood and burns, which made Severus stumble back in horror.  
  
In all the many years that he was a Death Eater and spy he had seen many torture sites where Voldemort like to have fun with his victims, but this room was far worst than any he had ever seen. The boy was laying in a gathering pool of his own blood. He was wearing only a pair of torn sweat pants that were way to large for him.  
  
The skin that he could see was covered in large dark bruises, raged cuts, and assorted burns. The glasses that he once wore were missing and one of his eyes was swollen shut. There was a long cut down the side of his face that looked as if it was mad by a knife. The boy's breathing was labored and shallow, which told him that one or more of the boy's ribs were broken.  
  
Severus slipped a hand into his cloak and pulled out a couple of bottles of healing potions. He poured each potion down Harry's throat, first went the one to control some of the bleeding, and then there was the one to help Harry breath and then a pain-killing potion. As soon as all of the potions were given to Harry he grabbed the small blanket off the bed quickly and wrapped it around the boy's small frame.  
  
He picked up the boy and was amazed at how light the boy was. There wasn't a once of fat on his small boy. He was beginning to be even more worried at this. The boy would be weaker than he thought because it seemed the boy hadn't eaten anything since he left Hogwarts. If that was so then how could the boy have enough strength to heal? Severus knew that he had to move quickly if he was going to save the boy, but he couldn't do anything here. What if the boy's relatives would come back? He would be able to help Harry with them around.  
  
Severus pulled the boy's small frame close to his body, his arms around the boy in a protective manner. He quickly left the room and headed down the stairs. He looked back around the house one last time, telling himself that he would come back for the boy's things later. Then after a moment he went outside. He heading down Privet Drive to get to the end of the Apparating wards and was almost there when he heard four small pops from the other end of the drive that told him someone else was there as well.  
  
He turned around to see four people he knew stand at the other end of the Drive staring at him. Severus turned and hurried to the end of the Apparating wards, which were only a few more feet, when he heard one of the four yell out Harry's name. He had got to the end of the ward and turned to look again at the four people.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
He woke up in the hospital wing sometimes later. Molly Weasley was sitting nearby with Ron and Hermione around her and she was crying. He sat and watched her for a moment before anyone noticed that he was awake.  
  
"Oh Sirius." Exclaim Hermione. "Sirius, Harry." she couldn't finish her statement before dissolving into tears. A coldness went over his heart when he heard the way she had to stop speaking and cry.  
  
"Sirius, it's Harry." Said Ron his voice was a little shaky but he kept it steady so that he could relay the important information to the worried godfather. "Last night after you guys got back to Hogwarts the Headmaster went up to his room to see what happened to the wards, only to find the ward to show that Harry was still alive." tears slide down his face as he stopped for a moment to take a breath. "Well the ward was not working anymore."  
  
"No." Sirius whispered. This was all just a bad dream that he was having. He would wake up any minute and Harry would be right there where Ron was sitting, smiling at him. Harry would be there to tell him everything was one big bad joke and there was nothing wrong, but then there was the way that Molly Weasley was crying. The way a mother would cry when she learned that one of her children had just died.  
  
There was also that feeling as if a hand was closing over his heart, and now it felt like the hand was squeezing all the life out of him. "No." he said again, but no one would tell him for sure. Minutes felt like hours as he sat there looking at each face for the answer to all of his questions, but something told him that he already knew the answer, he just didn't want to listening to it.  
  
Then suddenly the doors to the hospital wing opened and Dumbledore came through the doors followed closely by Snape would looked as if he had just went through a torture session with Voldemort. Dumbledore came up to his bed. The twinkle in eye was lost and the smile that seemed never to leave the Headmaster's face was gone. "Sirius I have some bad news." 


	4. Chapter Three: Harry?

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound;  
  
that saved a wretch like me!  
  
I once was lost, but now am found  
  
was blind, but now I see.  
  
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear;  
  
and grace my fear relieved.  
  
How precious did that grace appear;  
  
that hour I first believed.  
  
Thro' many dangers, toils and snares  
  
I have already come.  
  
'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far;  
  
and grace will lead me home.  
  
The lord has promised well to me;  
  
this word my hop secures.  
  
Go will my shield and portion be;  
  
as long as life endures.  
  
-Amazing Grace  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is A Powerful Thing  
  
Chapter Three: Harry?  
  
By: MostEvilKitten  
  
Harry was somewhere dark and he was falling but he wasn't afraid. In fact he couldn't feel a thing. He knew that this was odd and that he should be afraid, but somehow everything just seemed so peaceful. The darkness wasn't something to fear, because, as he heard someone say once, there is nothing there in the dark that wasn't there in the light  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
It was the day after Severus had got Harry away from his relative's house and he was sitting in a chair near Harry's new bed. He sat there and watched Harry sleep afraid that those bloody Muggles did too much damage to the boy for him to fully recover. In fact he knew that the boy would never fully recover. Well at least not mentally, but right now he was worried about the physical wounds that they inflected upon the boy.  
  
He was worried that the boy might not ever come out of this coma, as Severus called it. The thing was that he didn't know what was truly wrong with the boy. He was tempted to take him to Hogwarts and let Madam Pomfrey take care of his wounds, but he knew that if Harry was anywhere near Hogwarts Dumbledore would know and he would demand answers of Severus that he wasn't repaired to give.  
  
Then the Headmaster would make up some excuse about his wounds or even place memory charms on a few people and send the boy back to his relative's, and Severus couldn't let that happen. No! He was going to make it so that the boy never had to ever look at those veil Muggles again, even if he would get sent to the wizards' prison, Azkaban.  
  
No one should be put though what was done to the boy. No one! Well maybe Voldemort, but that was a different story. Severus didn't know exactly what had been done but he could tell by the way he found the boy, that it was something horrible. He knew that he would never be able to get rid of that scene that was still playing over and over again, burnt into his mind. It would always be there, haunting him every time he would look at the boy.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Flashback.  
  
He was watching the four people on the other end of the street as they were watching him take Harry away. He wondered what they might be thinking. Did they think that he was a Death Eater taking Harry to Voldemort and his death? He knew that they wouldn't think that he was the boy's guardian angel taking him away from a life of torture and pain to a safe place, not the way he was dressed. Which, Snape thought, was a good thing, because if they thought the Death Eaters had Harry then they wouldn't be looking where he was going to take Harry.  
  
He watched them and noticed some very curious things about the four people who were on the same street as him. Albus Dumbledore was behind all of them, watching anxiously has the other three rushed towards him and Harry. Severus wondered why the old man wasn't making a move to rescue the boy.  
  
Then there was Mr. And Mrs. Weasley. They were both rushing towards the two of them. Molly Weasley seemed to have tears sliding down her face as she watched Severus holding the boy on the other end of the Drive, not knowing that it was Severus and not another Death Eater. Arthur's face was red and he wasn't breathing very well, but he still ran to help the boy.  
  
Sirius Black, the boy's godfather, was in the lead and it was a considerable lead at that. Anger lined his face, and fear pushed him on at what was an inhuman pace. It was as if he had changed into his Animagus form, and it seemed like Black was about to get them when he suddenly was thrown back.  
  
Severus smirked at this. He had never liked Sirius Black, in fact he hated him, and to watch as the man was thrown back twenty feet made the man smile a bit, but his thoughts were soon turned back towards Harry and he Apparated away quickly.  
  
When the two of them Disapparated they were in a small cottage on the outskirts of a small wizarding village near London. It was a cottage that had been in the Snape family for years, one that hadn't been visited by any member of the Snape family in over a hundred years. Everyone in the family knew about it, but no one went there. There was a curse on it, or so everyone was told.  
  
It was said that the cottage was curse by a member of an old pureblood family that had long since died out. The curse was said to give a person constant nightmares whenever they slept under the roof of the cottage, but Severus wasn't concerned with the curse right now. He was worried about Harry.  
  
They had Disapparated into one of the bedrooms that quietly sat in the house. He quickly put the small boy into one of the old beds and got to work. First he used a little charm to clean off all the blood that cover the boy. When he had finished he got a good look at Harry, which made him stubble back with a gasp.  
  
The boy's skin was ashen and paper thin from the lack of food. His cheekbones jutted out as well as his ribs and hipbones. Most of his body was covered in livid burses and angry red cuts, some of which were still bleeding. The boy's breathing was swallow and ragged and Severus feared that a broke rib might have punctured one of his lungs.  
  
He reached into his robes and pulled out every potion and other things that he had brought to help the boy, but soon found that he didn't have enough potions to help and had to go quickly to his office to get them. He picked up his wand and made a fire in the room's fireplace as he pulled out a pouch of Floo powder with the other hand. Throwing a pinch of Floo powder he walked into the flames and called out "Hogwarts Snape's office".  
  
As quickly as possible he gathered everything that he would need to help Harry and quickly Flooed back to the cottage. When he got back he rushed over to the boy's bed and placed all the potions on the bedside table. He was putting them in order and was getting ready to get started on the boy when a sudden chill went up his spine and his heart filled with dread.  
  
THE BOY WASN'T BREATHING!!!!  
  
The thought went through his head as he turned quickly to the boy. Harry's lips were blue with the lack of oxygen and he looked as if he was sleeping peacefully. Panic went through Severus has he worked a couple of healing charms to get the boy to breath again, but nothing seemed to work. Severus took a deep breath and tried to think. What was he going to do? Suddenly he thought about something that Muggles do. They would send electricity through the body of a person, whose heart had stopped to get it working again.  
  
Severus thought that his might be a good idea. He pointed his wand at Harry's chest and whispered a spell and a moment later Harry's small body jumped off the bed, but he still wasn't breathing. Severus tried the spell a couple more times, before he finally heard Harry take deep breathes in. He sighed in relief and went back to help the boy.  
  
First he had to know what was wrong with Harry, so he did a charm that Madam Pomfrey had shown him before. It was required apiece of parchment, a quill and a wand. When you put the charm on it would make the quill write down whatever injury the person has on the piece parchment, so that you could know what was wrong with the person. That is what he did. The placed the charm on Harry and moments later each and every cut, burse, broken bone and other injuries were written down on the parchment, which ended up over a foot long.  
  
Severus scanned the list with a worried expression. How could anyone be that veil to do all that to a child? He read over the list and when he came to the last thing listed he had a shocked expression as he fell back into a chair. How was he going to deal with this?  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
That's were he was again, in the chair, thinking the same thoughts has before. How was he going to deal with this? It was simply too much to deal with alone, but he couldn't go to anyone without alerting the wrong person to where Harry was.  
  
He had spent all of that night healing Harry of his physical wounds. Cleaning the cuts, and repairing the broken bones, but now he could do nothing else but let the boy get some rest. He had put Harry into a magic coma, in order for the boy to get that rest.  
  
Severus could feel his dark mark twinge a bit. What if Voldemort was to call him when he was here with Harry, and there was no one else around to watch after the boy. He wasn't going to leave the boy alone again, what if he stops breathing again? No! He couldn't let that happen.  
  
He took a deep breath and picked up the parchment that listed Harry's injuries again. He knew what he had to do. He had to get the only person who cared for the boy as a father. The only person who he could probably get to believe him when he told him about the things that were done to the boy by those Muggles, the only person who had really known Lily's sister to know what she was capable of. That person was Sirius Black.  
  
Severus was getting a headache again. He didn't want to see Sirius, but he had on other choice, so after placing a charm on Harry that would alert him if anything was amiss with him, he Flooed back to Hogwarts.  
  
"I just hope Sirius doesn't kill me." He said mentally before the Floo network took him away. 


	5. Chapter Four: They did What!

Why is it always me?  
  
Why am I always hurting?  
  
Why can't anyone see through my mask?  
  
Why can't anyone love me?  
  
I watch everyone walk around,  
  
with someone to love them.  
  
But yet I am sitting here alone.  
  
Why do I have to be alone?  
  
And Lonely?  
  
Is it me?  
  
Am I awful?  
  
Am I a freak?  
  
Is that why no one can love me?  
  
Why is it always me?  
  
Why am I always hurting?  
  
Why can't anyone see through my mask?  
  
Why can't anyone love me?  
  
-MostEvilKitten 'Why'  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is a Powerful Thing  
  
Chapter Four: They did what!!!  
  
By: MostEvilKitten  
  
Harry was in a green field with flowers scattered throughout the field. They were all silver flowers. They made him smile. This was such a peaceful place to be and nothing to break the peacefulness. He lay in the middle of the field in the soft grass watching the clouds float by. The breeze softly played with his now shoulder length hair as it swept across the field.  
  
After a while of laying like this he sat up and starting playing with the flowers. He picked one of them and studies it trying to memorize every detail of it. He smelled it and it smelled like a cross between roses and lilies. He had his eyes closed as he took in the fragrance of the flower. A shadow pasted over his eyelids, which made him open his eyes, to find a man standing over him.  
  
The man looked like an older version of himself. He had ebony colored hair, but unlike his it was neatly cut and didn't stand on end. His eyes were the same color green has Harry's. He wore black Hogwarts robes. It was Harry in ever feature except this man didn't wear any glasses.  
  
"Hello Harry." The man said. Harry knew this man from somewhere, but he wasn't afraid of him. He knew that the man wasn't going to hurt him. He even knew the man's name, and so he returned the greeting.  
  
"Hello Tom."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Sirius was laying on the hospital wing bed feeling numb. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. Not Harry. Why did they have to take him? It just wasn't fair. Couldn't they leave the boy alone for one moment? Couldn't they let him be a kid for a moment? No they had to give him things to deal with, things that even an adult would have a hard time dealing with and they gave them to a child. Why was it always Harry?  
  
Silent tears slid down his cheeks as he sat on the bed listening to what Albus Dumbledore had to say. The ward that told them that Harry was still alive had stopped working, and that meant only one of two things. That it had gone down with the other wards, or that Harry had indeed died, but Sirius had a feeling. He knew. Something was terrible wrong, and he knew that Harry had died.  
  
The fact that he last saw his godson being carried away by a person that looked like a Death Eater didn't give him much hope that Harry was still alive. Albus stopped talking a moment before it registered in Sirius' mind that everything was quiet, except the sobbing of Mrs. Weasley and Hermione by his side. Even if someone tried to tell him something he won't be able to make any sense of it.  
  
He sat there staring into space and the only thing he saw was Harry's smiling face in his mind. The time when he told Harry that he could live with him. The only time that he saw Harry really smile. It was the scene that played over in his mind, torturing him. He could of have lived with Harry and they all would have been happy and safe if he just killed Peter when he had the change to a few years back. Then Voldemort wouldn't have come back and Harry would still be there with them, smiling at his jokes. Harry was really Sirius' only reason for living. He was his only reason to stay sane in Azkaban prison. Harry's safety was the only reason why he escaped that awful prison, but now that Harry was gone what would he do? What would his reason be for living now? He didn't know and that is why he sat there staring same place in front of him as he had done for the last hour, with a distant expression.  
  
He didn't know how long he had been sitting in the bed thinking these things over, but the next thing he knew was that there was an eerie silence that hung in the darkened hospital wing. He realized that everyone had gone earlier in the day as he looked around the room, but then his eyes swept over a shadow sitting in a chair on the other side of the wing. Sirius groaned when he saw the shadow.  
  
"Have you come to gloat Snape?" Sirius hissed at the shadow that had been watching him intently for the past couple of hours, wondering when Sirius would come out of the stupor that he was in.  
  
"I do not gloat in something like this." Severus protested. Severus stood up from the chair and walked over to the bed that Sirius sat in. An unreadable expressionless mask set securely on his face. He sat down in the chair next to the bed.  
  
"So then what are you doing here?" Sirius glared at him, wondering why exactly he was there.  
  
"I don't think we should talk about it here." Said Severus as he glanced around the wing looking to see if anyone else was there, but the Weasley's and Hermione had gone back to the Burrow a couple of hours ago and Albus went to his office and so did Madam Pomfrey.  
  
"Snape what are you up too?" questioned Sirius  
  
"You are going to have to come with me to find out." Said Severus as he pulled out a small golden key from inside his cloak. "If you are coming you have to take a hold of the key." Sirius glanced from the key to Severus with a suspicious look.  
  
"There is no way in hell that I am going with you with a portkey that I don't know where it goes."  
  
"Fine, then you won't know about Harry."  
  
"WHAT ABOUT HARRY!" Sirius yelled at him as he jumped out of bed and drove towards the darker man.  
  
"Grab a hold of this portkey and you will know." Said Snape as he held out the small golden key. Sirius stared at the key curiously. He didn't want to go with Snape anywhere but if it was about Harry he was going to have to. Reluctantly he touched the portkey and with a tap of Snape's wand he felt a tug behind his navel.  
  
Before he knew it he was in a dark room. This room was covered in dust as if no one had been in it for a hundred years. There were a couple of chair sitting by a dust-covered table. One of the chairs were tipped over and sitting on its side. Severus motioned for Sirius to take a seat in one of the chair, and as Sirius picked up the tipped over chair and sat down, Severus exited the room for a moment. When he came back he was holding a piece of parchment.  
  
"Well Snape what does this have to do with Harry?" Sirius asked impatiently. Severus pulled out the other chair on the other side of the table and sat down. Then he reached over the table and placed the parchment in front of Sirius before he started to speak.  
  
"The other day I was at a Death Eater meeting for Dumbledore." Severus started and Sirius glared at him suspiciously. "At that meeting the Dark Lord said that he knew were Harry was and would soon know how to lower that wards around the house."  
  
"I knew it the Death Eaters took Harry and killed him." Sirius interrupted with a depressed tone in his voice.  
  
"Please Black let me finish before you speak." Severus glared at him for a moment before starting again. God he hated being interrupted when he was trying to say something important. "I came back to Hogwarts to warning Albus about what was said in the meeting and told him that the boy should be moved from that house, but Albus didn't think it was important." Sirius went to say something but Severus brought up his hand to stop him, knowing that the man would want to say something about what Severus had just said.  
  
"I was mad at this." Severus continued. "So I went down to my lab and made Poppy some more healing potions. On my way to deliver those potions I came across two students in the corridor arguing. Mr. Weasley and Miss. Granger were arguing about Harry and why he hadn't owl either of them all summer; even through he said he would. Mr. Weasley was troubled about the way Harry's relatives were treating him and that was the reason why they were at Hogwarts to ask the Headmaster if they could take Harry to the Burrow for the rest of the summer. I didn't like the way that sounded." Severus stopped for a moment and sighed. Sirius was on the edge of his seat willing Severus to continue the story.  
  
"I went to Harry's relatives house. I have known each and every ward that was up around the house for years now, and so it was easy to take them down. I tried to be undetected, but I guess something I did alerted Albus. When I went into the house I went to find the room that Harry might be in. I found a room that was locked from the outside with five padlocks. When I finally got into the room it was like. like one of Voldemort's torture chambers Sirius." Sirius was getting really angry now. Snape had been the one who took Harry, but he began to get scared when he heard Severus stutter and then call him by his first name.  
  
"I found the boy, Sirius, he was in a bad way." Severus motioned for the parchment. "Those are all the things that those fucking Muggles did to him." There was a heavy silence has Sirius picked up the parchment and read the list of injuries out loud as if to let them sink in.  
  
"Malnutrition, Bruising covering eighty percent of the body, lacerations of the arms, legs and torso, small circular burns on the arms and legs made by cigarettes, internal bleeding around the liver and kidneys, a fractured right femur (1), a 2nd degree sprain of the right ankle (2), a dislocated left shoulder, fractured collar bone, three fractured ribs, a puncture lung from one of the broken ribs, lacerations of the back from a whip, a head concisions and." Sirius' voice had been getting weaker and weaker has he got through the list and on the last injury of the list his voice failed him all together.  
  
He looked up at Severus, who had his elbows on the table and his face in his hands. When Severus heard Sirius stop talking he looked up into the eyes of the other man to find such sorrow and pain there. "Rape." Choked Severus.  
  
"How could anyone do such a thing to anyone, especially a boy." Sirius' voice sound lost and confused.  
  
"I don't know. I brought the boy back he to heal him." Started Severus.  
  
"So he is dead then, those bastards killed him." Sirius stood up angrily.  
  
"No Sirius, Harry is not dead." Sirius looked down at the other man.  
  
"But the ward."  
  
"It is true that Harry did die for a couple of minutes. Well at least physically. He stopped breathing and his heart stopped, but I got them to start again and all of his major injuries have been healed." Severus sighed again. "His is in a magically induced coma so that he can rest and heal, but he isn't out of the woods just yet. I have brought you here to help me watch after the boy, so that we can take turns being seen by Dumbledore, so that he will not get suspicious about where the boy might be. Also you will have to watch after him if I get summoned by the Dark Lord." Sirius, who was still not all completely there, nodded at what Severus just said.  
  
"Wait why don't we just take him to the hospital wing at Hogwarts so that Poppy can take care of him."  
  
"Have you heard nothing I told you before Black?" Severus said in an angered voice, they were back to last names. "I told Albus about a possible attack on the boy and that he was in danger, but still the Headmaster in his infinite wisdom said Harry was not to be moved. The wards around the boys house is suppose to tell him if the boys gets so much as a hangnail, but still Harry was abused by his family. You don't think that he knew that this was going on?"  
  
"But why?" Sirius was lost. He couldn't think of why Albus Dumbledore, if he indeed knew, would let it continue, or why he would let Harry stay in a place where he was in danger.  
  
"I know that this comes as a shock to you Black, but the Headmaster isn't as innocence as you have thought. He is a manipulative old coot that uses everyone around him as a tool to get what he wants. It is every Slytherin if you ask me."  
  
"I can believe that. I just can't." Severus stood from his chair and headed for the door that he came from a while ago.  
  
"Follow me. I want to show you something that might change your mind about what you think about our dear Headmaster." Sirius followed Severus through the halls of the small cottage and they finally came to another door. "Now this isn't going to be pleasant." Warned Severus.  
  
Severus opened the door and motioned for Sirius to go inside before him. Sirius walked into the room and looked around. "My God!" said Sirius as his eyes swept over the frail body of a boy laying in a bed. "Harry!" said Sirius as he rushed over to his Godson's side. There were bruises that covered him, some of which were a greenish yellow old bruising and some were a dark purple telling Sirius that they were rather new.  
  
"And Albus knew about every blow." Severus whispered to Sirius. "We can't tell him that we have the boy, because he would probably just send him back to the Dursley's, and neither of us want that." Sirius nodded his head in agreement.  
  
"Okay Snape I will do it, but just for Harry's sake."  
  
"That is all I am asking."  
  
"How are you going to get Harry back anyways?"  
  
"I was going to place him on the Hogwarts Express before anyone else got on. I will take off the magical coma so that he will wake up a couple of hours after the train starts out to Hogsmeade. He will never know where he was or know saved him. I was going to get his things in a couple of days, and buy his stuff new school stuff at Hogsmeade so that he could have them, but if you want to do that it is find with me."  
  
"I will get his things from the Dursley's. I want to have a little talk with them." Sirius growled.  
  
"I thought you might want to." Said Severus. "Well I will ask you now to watch after Harry for me. I have to go and meet with Albus." Sirius nodded in response as Severus left them alone and portkeyed back to Hogwarts.  
  
He stalked through the corridor with his robes billowing ominously behind him. When he reached the Headmaster's office he found Albus sitting behind his desk looking through parchment after parchment in search of the answer to the 'Harry' question. Severus cleared his throat to announce that he had arrived.  
  
"Ahh, Severus my boy, please have a seat." Albus said and motioned for a bowl of what looked like Muggle sweets wrapped in a silver wrapper and shaped in a pyramid. "Kisses?"  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"They are a Muggle sweet made of chocolate, quite good."  
  
"No Albus. Why have you called me here?" asked Severus, although he knew exactly why he was there, he just wouldn't tell Albus that.  
  
"I understand that you have heard the unfortunate circumstances around our Mr. Potter?" Severus looked a little confused.  
  
"Are you talking about the plot against him by Voldemort knowing where he lives?"  
  
"No my dear boy. The boy was taken the other day by someone who was dressed as a Death Eater and knew how to take down the wards." Severus had an expression of mock surprise on his face as Albus studied him for a moment, but then he continued when he was satisfied that Severus didn't know anything about the disappearance of Harry. "I had a ward up on him to tell me if he was alive or not, and that wards is not working anymore."  
  
"Do you mean that Mr. Potter in dead?"  
  
"No it means that he might be dead. That ward was connected to the other wards around the Dursley's house, and it might have stopped working with the others. I want you to go to Voldemort and see if he indeed has the boy, or if it is someone else has the boy."  
  
"Yes Albus." Said Severus in a reluctant tone. "I will do that."  
  
"Thank you my boy. That is all." Albus said with a little smile. Severus got up and walked out. He walked to the edge of the Apparating wards and disappeared with a pop and a sigh he was going to see Voldemort. 


	6. Chapter Five: Dreams

A mask of plastic happiness often covers her sadness  
  
Her beliefs hidden from most  
  
Afraid of, but willing to face the unknown  
  
Wondering where her place is in this life  
  
She has come close to sharing herself  
  
Never completely revealing anything to anyone  
  
Feelings of invisible chains corner her  
  
When she dreams, reality shatters before her very eyes  
  
Accomplishments she strives for just at hands grasp  
  
She feels lost sometimes, not yet finding her notch in this world  
  
At times the glimmer in her calm eyes slowly disappears  
  
But within her heart a silent flame burns her inside and out  
  
She roams day by day, playing roles  
  
Strength unknowingly resides in her  
  
History repeats itself once again  
  
The translucent veil she so proudly wears  
  
Little by little answers will come, pushing it aside  
  
One day there will be no more mask for her to wear  
  
One day her beliefs will be known  
  
One day she'll know her place in this life  
  
One day she will share herself  
  
ONE DAY this mask will be NO MORE  
  
-Wolfgirl 'The mask'  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is a Powerful Thing  
  
Chapter Five: Dreams  
  
By: MostEvilKitten  
  
* Dream * (No more like a dream of a memory)  
  
Harry sat at the end of his bed feeling weak from the lack of food. He hadn't eaten a proper meal since he felt Hogwarts, but he wasn't sure how long ago that was since the window was boarded up. His Uncle would come every now and then with some old moldy bread and a little water, but it was never enough to build up his strength. Even if he had enough food to build his strength there was always the fact that his Uncle would punish him for being who he was.  
  
Right now Harry could smell something cooking from downstairs. It smelt rather good and with a grumble of his stomach wished that he could have some of it to eat, but he knew that was wishful thinking.  
  
He brought his hand up and inspected a cut that he had across his arm. He whined in pain has his shaky hand clumsily played over the cut. The room didn't have enough light to really make it out with his eyes so he had to use his other senses. He now knew what it must feel like to be blind, because he really hadn't seen anything for a while, not since his Uncle was last in the room. That was the only time that light was allowed in the room.  
  
He could still smell the food cooking downstairs has he heard heavy feet on the stairs climbing them and then walking down the hall towards his room. His heart stopped.  
  
"It can't be that time already." He said to himself. His Uncle wouldn't come up to 'punish' them until after the evening news, but it wasn't even dinnertime yet and there were heavy footsteps outside his door. He rushed over to 'his corner' trying to get as far away from the door as possible.  
  
A moment later the door flew wide open and there in the doorway was Vernon Dursley standing with a plate of what looked like turkey meat steaming with the most beautiful smell his ever knew. He looked at the food longingly as Vernon stood there smiled maliciously at the boy.  
  
"I guess you want some of this don't you?" asked Vernon. Harry knew that the man was only teasing him with the food, but as to not make Vernon madder than he already was he nodded his head in response.  
  
"Y...Yes sir." He said. He was barely strong enough to speak.  
  
"Well then here you go, boy, and eat it all." Said Vernon as he placed the plate on the floor near the boy. Harry looked from the plate to Vernon and back again warily. He did trust the food, if Vernon was going to readily give it to him like that. "What is the food your Aunt cooks not good enough for you?" There was anger in the voice.  
  
Fearing his Uncle's wraith he quickly went to the plate and picked up a small piece of meat. Putting it in his mouth he looked up at Vernon to see that the man still had his sadistic smile as he watched the boy. He tasted the meat and nothing seemed wrong with it, in fact it was really good, so he drove into the food. Eating every bite of it hungrily.  
  
When he was done he went back to 'his corner' and waited for Vernon to collect the plate. Vernon, with plate in hand, stopped at the door before exiting. "I gather you like the food?" Harry nodded in answer. "Yes? Well who knew that owl meat could taste so good?" Vernon said with a laugh.  
  
Harry's heart dropped down into his stomach. 'Did he just say owl meat. NO. Hedwig.' Tears came to Harry's eyes as he realized what Vernon made him do. It was as if the fat Muggle had just put him under the Imperius Curse and he killed his owl himself.  
  
"At least that ruddy owl won't be trying to get out and send for help. Oh yeah." Vernon turned back to look at the boy in the eye. "We burnt the rest of those wizard things of your, but that damned stick of your wouldn't burn so we broke it in two." He pulled out Harry wand from his jacket pocket. It was indeed broken in half. Harry now let the tears fall down his cheeks, what about his books and robes, his photo album, his father's invisibility cloak? They were all destroyed, even the only things that connected him to his parent. They were all gone and he would never get them back, as he would never get Hedwig back.  
  
Vernon laughed maliciously as he threw the broken wand into the room and slammed the door, locking each and every lock before heading back down stairs to have his own dinner. Harry crawled towards his broken wand whispered Hedwig's name as he inched closer and closer to the wand. When he got there he picked up the wand and caressed it in his hands.  
  
"Why me?" he whispered as he broke down crying.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Sirius sat there in a chair next to Harry's bed and watched his Godson sleep. Silent tears streaked down his cheeks as he looked at the frail form of the boy, wondering just how much stuff the boy had to deal with in his short life. It all just seemed unfair. It seemed to Sirius that Harry had done and see and gone through so much stuff, more than he had every had to go through when he was in Azkaban for twelve years. Now that was saying something.  
  
But now he knew where Harry was and that he was alive, Sirius could breathe a breath of relief, but then he started to worry about the boy. Harry would be mentally screwed up when he came out of this coma, if he came out of the coma. The damage could have been too much and he would be in this coma forever, and so that is what he would do. Sit next to Harry until he woke up or until Sirius died. He promised Harry that as he sat there next to the boy. He promised that no matter what he would be right by Harry's side, no matter what.  
  
Sirius examined the boy's body to look at every cut, every bruise and his blood started to boil. How could someone do something like this, it was inhuman? Oh yes he was going to have a nice long 'talk' with the Dursley's about this. He would 'talk' to him about every cut, every bruise, every burn, every broken bone and the.  
  
He couldn't bring himself to think about it. It was so unthinkable.  
  
So as to stop think about the horrors inflicted on the boy he turned his thoughts to Albus Dumbledore. Did the Headmaster know about what was happening at the Dursley's? He was going to find out. He would go up to that room in Albus' office where he had the wards, and look at every single one of them to see if the older man knew what was going on, but for some reason he was having a hard time trusting Snape over Dumbledore.  
  
He couldn't see the older man being manipulative like that. It just wasn't Albus Dumbledore at all, but then again what was it that Snape said. 'He is a manipulative old coot that uses everyone around him as a tool to get what he wants.' Was Dumbledore using him as a tool, was he using Harry? Had he used Lily and James as tools? Oh James. The memory of James was too painful for him.  
  
Sirius and James Potter had always been best friends; no they were more than best friend. Sirius would sometimes get extremely jealous of Lily, because Sirius had loved James just as much, but it was Lily in the end that won him over. Sometimes Sirius thought he saw sadden look in James' eyes when he would look at Sirius as if he really wanted to be with Sirius, but Sirius just played it off as a flight of fantasy.  
  
Sirius had loved James so much that he let James go, but that didn't mean that he still wasn't James' best friend. The only other person who knew about Sirius and James' relationship was Remus. He was actually happy for the both of them and when James went for Lily Remus was there for Sirius. Remus had always been there for Sirius even now.  
  
But now Sirius had to be there for James' son, to make up for the mistakes of the past. He was going to protect Harry like he could never protect his father.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Severus pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head and let the shadows of the deep hood cover his face. He hadn't had time to get his Death Eater mask from his chambers; he wanted to get this over with so that he could be in the hospital wing taking the potions to counteract the effects of the Cruico Curse.  
  
He walked quickly from the graveyard near the Riddle house, up into the house itself where Voldemort had been staying. He was stopped at the entrance by a couple of Death Eater guards and was forced to present his Dark Mark in order to enter.  
  
Once he was inside the house he quickly headed up the stairs to the room where he knew that Voldemort would be. Outside the room stood another Death Eater. This one would wait outside of the room to inform the Dark Lord that someone had arrived or to give the Dark Lord various bits of information that was useful. Severus walked up to the Death Eater and glared at him for a moment before tell him who he was and why he was there.  
  
The other Death Eater nodded and entered the room. Severus could hear the Death Eater stutter out his name and then he knew which Death Eater it was. Wormtail. The person who betrayed Harry and his parent to Voldemort, the person who was responsible for 'his' Lily's death, oh how he hated the man.  
  
When Wormtail came back out of the room he told Severus that Voldemort would see him Wormtail let him enter the room. The room was rather dark, only the small fire in the fireplace was lighting the room. There wasn't that much furniture in the room either. There were two high back chairs, one with its back to the door and the other facing that chair. In between the two chairs stood a small coffee table with an old wizards chess set on it. It seemed as if there was a game in play.  
  
Severus watched has a pale hand reached down and moved a pawn a couple of spaces out of it start position to guard another pawn that he had moved before. Then he moved the board so that the other side was facing him and he sat on contemplated the next move.  
  
"Do you play chess Severus?" asked the man in the chair. His voice was cold and he seemed to hiss the words out.  
  
"I do a little my Lord." Responded Severus.  
  
"Then you can appreciate the strategy of it." Voldemort said and then gestured for Severus to take the seat across from him. Severus walked over to the seat and sat down looking the whole time at the chessboard. Not daring to look up at Voldemort out of fear of the man. "First you have the two Kings, who can't really do anything but move one space around the board, but they are the most important pieces of the game, because if are taken then the game is over." Voldemort said again and then moved a black pawn out into play, before turning the board again and playing the white pieces.  
  
"Then you have the next important piece, the queen. The Queen can move any way she wants she is powerful. There are the other pieces on the back row, the knight, the hook and the castle. They are powerful in there own right, but in the end ultimately expendable, but the most expendable of all is the pawn. You use them to draw out the other pieces to get them in position to be taken by other pawns or your piece of power." Voldemort moved a white knight out onto the main board and became the black side again.  
  
"But the most ironic thing about chest compared to real life, is that the pieces are black and white. They chest doesn't allow for the shades of gray that are in real life, and to the light side of this war, they can only see the black and white of the world. They cannot see the things that are needed to be done for survival. Like being a spy." the last few words had great meaning in them and suddenly Severus began to panic. He went to say something but was stopped by Voldemort.  
  
"No need my dear Severus. I have known you were a spy for Dumbledore long before that incident with our young Harry Potter. You are only trying to survive; you also give me as much information than you do that old man. If you didn't you would have been dead long before that time." Severus breathed a sigh of relief and it seemed like a little weight was taken off his shoulders. Voldemort knew he was a spy, but now he was more like a double agent, supplying both sides with information.  
  
"Yes Severus you are a pawn, being used by both sides to get what they want. It is a pity really, you could have been one of the pieces of power, but now, it would be very hard to claim one of those positions." Voldemort's cold words cut him deeply. He was feeling torn, in one hand you had the light side with Albus Dumbledore who was using a boy as a pawn and letting him be abused by his relatives, and in the other hand you had the dark side you had Voldemort who was a mass murder, killing people for fun and sport. The two sides seemed to blend together into a side that he was on, the gray side. Where people stayed to be safe from both side. Not to be a pawn of the light side and not to be killed by the dark side. He knew he would have to leave the gray side soon enough and choose between the dark and light side soon enough, he just didn't want to. His thoughts were interrupted as Voldemort continued to speak.  
  
"Now take our young Harry Potter here." He picked up a white pawn form the board and studied it. "Dumbledore is using the boy as a pawn to draw me out so that his piece of power can take me down, if the boy does kill me himself. If the boy isn't doing something that Dumbledore deems important then he leaves the boy to the wolves and to fend for himself. I can relate to the boy, as I was orphaned as a child and it was the same way with me when I went to Hogwarts and Dumbledore leave me at the orphanage during the summer with the abusive caretakers, even through I told him about the things that happen there." Voldemort placed the pawn into play and became black again. Then he picked up the black queen and studied that piece.  
  
"Dumbledore doesn't see thing as I do. He doesn't see the little things that effect people as I do. He looks at the greater picture and that is all he looks at. He looks at Harry and only sees a pawn that he can use, but when I see Harry I see something different. I see the piece of utmost power. He is not a pawn he is a queen with the power to end everything, but because Dumbledore cannot see this I don't see the boy being the white queen." Voldemort move the queen into a 'check mate' position of the board. "I see him in black." He said before tipping over the white king signifying the end of the game.  
  
Severus though about this and with a heavy heart he had to agree with Voldemort on this one. Unless Dumbledore did something to change his way of thinking right away he would soon lose Harry to Voldemort and the world would be over run with darkness.  
  
"I know what you were going to tell me about the boy Severus." Said Voldemort and Severus looked up quickly, but he couldn't see the Dark Lord's face it was hidden by a shadow that the high back chair made, but he could see that Voldemort was dressed in black robes and his hands were extremely pale, as if they had never seen the sun.  
  
"The boy is not at his abusive relatives house anymore. Someone has taken him haven't they Severus." All Severus could do is nod is head in response. "And you haven't told Dumbledore about this?" Severus shook his head no. "Well then this is and interesting turn of events. I was planning on rescuing the boy from his relatives, but it seems that you have already done that. Yes I think this is better than what I was planning. I have seen the boy's future Severus and it is going just as I want it too. You did good by me with this, but there is one thing that I am a little anger about Severus."  
  
"Yes my Lord."  
  
"You didn't tell me you knew which wards Dumbledore had up around the boy's house, and for that you will be punished, Cruico." Severus dropped to the floor screaming in pain until Voldemort was satisfied that he was learned his lesson. "Next time I will want you to be more loyal to me." That was the last thing he knew until he woke up in the hospital wing at Hogwarts.  
  
The first person he saw was Albus sitting in the chair next to his bed. He groaned inwardly. He didn't want to deal with the bastard right now, but the man was so persistent.  
  
"Awww. Severus you are back in the land of the living. If you don't mind me asking what did Voldemort have to say about Harry."  
  
'Of course I mind you asking, my head feeling like it is about to exploded and you can't wait for one moment before getting what you want.' Was the answer Severus wished he could say but he answer the Headmaster differently? "If he does know where the boy is he isn't telling me Albus. I think he is suspicious of me right and doesn't trust me with the more... sensitive things." He said and heard Dumbledore sigh sadly.  
  
"Are you sure he didn't give you a clue as to where the boy maybe."  
  
"Yes Albus I am sorry about it, but I don't know if he knows where the boy is, although I am sure he has is suspicious."  
  
'Yes of course. Of course." Albus said before leaving the hospital wing. Severus was alone to think about was Voldemort had told him.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
* Dream *  
  
Harry was in the green field again, surround by silver flowers and the man that looked just like him, but without the scar, was sitting close by watching him careful.  
  
"You had another dream again didn't you Harry?" asked you man and Harry simple nodded his head. A single tear fell down his cheek. "Oh Harry I am sorry that they would do those things to you. I know how it feeling to be left alone with people like that." Harry picked up a silver flower and studied it. "Remember Harry, here in this field no one can touch you, and no one can hurt you. I won't let them."  
  
Harry looked up at the man with a hopeful expression. "You promise?" he asked.  
  
"Yes Harry I promise." Harry smiled at this and dived at the man as he was pulled into a hug.  
  
"Thanks Tom." 


	7. Chapter Six: What?

He is a god in my eyes, that man,  
  
Given to sit in front of you  
  
And close to himself sweetly to hear  
  
The sound of you speaking.  
  
Your magical laugh--this I swear-  
  
Batters my heart--my breast astir-  
  
My voice when I see you suddenly near  
  
Refuses to come.  
  
My tongue breaks up and a delicate fire  
  
Runs through my flesh; I see not a thing  
  
With my eyes, and all that I hear  
  
In my ears is a hum.  
  
The sweat runs down, a shuddering takes  
  
Me in every part and pale as the drying  
  
Grasses, then, I think I am near  
  
The moment of dying.  
  
-Sappho 'I More Than Envy Him'  
  
Translated by: Paul Roche  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is a Powerful Thing  
  
Chapter Six: What?  
  
By: MostEvilKitten  
  
Sirius didn't leave Harry's side for the next two days. He sat and watched as the boy's chest rose and fell with every breath he took. As Sirius watched his godson sleep he was plotting all the things that he could do to those evil-gits of Muggles that dared called themselves Harry's relatives.  
  
Severus had been in the room a couple of times during the last couple of days, but he wasn't there for too long, because he had a couple of things that he had to do for both Dumbledore and Voldemort.  
  
Sirius knew of Severus' spy status for a while now, and he gained some respect for his old rival when he would notice the condition Severus was in every time he came back from one of the Death Eater meetings that he had to go to.  
  
Severus would come back to the little cottage covered in his own blood and suffering from the after affect of certain curses that Sirius knew about from being an Aruor before going to Azkaban. In these times Sirius had to care for both Severus and Harry. It was lucky for Sirius that Severus kept the right potions on stock in the cottage.  
  
Right now Sirius was sitting in the room watching Harry with an anxious expression. He was remembering the times that he babysat for James and Lily. He remembered how he would lay on their couch holding the small baby that was Harry. He remembered how small the boy was and how innocence the boy looked as he slept there on his chest. Remembering this would bring tears to the older man's eyes.  
  
He wanted Harry to wake up so that he could comfort him, because lately Harry was restless in the bed, as if he was reliving everything that happened to him since the beginning of the summer, but that was impossible... Wasn't it?  
  
Harry was in a magical coma and Sirius didn't think you could dream in a magical coma. It was kind of like taking a great amount of dreamless sleep potion, in that you couldn't dream, but every now and then Harry would stir in the bed and whimper as if someone was hurting him.  
  
In these times Sirius would instinctively jump to his feet and go to Harry's bed and start trying to wake the boy from his sleep, but Harry would not wake, which made him worry even more.  
  
What if Harry never woke up from this magical coma? What if he stays this way forever, just out of his reach to comfort him? These thoughts are why Sirius was sitting in the chair next to Harry's bed with an anxious expression.  
  
"Sirius?" a cold silky voice pulled him out of though. Sirius looked towards the door where Severus stood looking at Harry sleep for a moment before turning to Sirius. "I thought that we could go get Harry's things form that house tonight. Now that Harry has seemed to be alright to be on his own for a while."  
  
Sirius looked at Severus suspired at the quiet almost tender tone that he spoke in and upset about thinking about leaving the side of his godson. He wanted to be there if Harry woke up or if anything happened, but the fact was that Harry wasn't going to wake up any time soon and nothing had happened in the last couple of days that made him think that anything bad would happen.  
  
"I don't know. I don't want to leave Harry." Sirius said quietly, as if he might wake Harry if he spoke any louder.  
  
"Sirius, Harry will be fine. I will put a charm on him to tell us if he so much as bats an eye." Severus said trying to get Sirius to come. He didn't want to see those Muggles by himself; he needed someone else with him, so that he wouldn't do anything... drastic, like blowing up the whole block.  
  
Sirius looked Severus in the eye and sighed. He really didn't want to leave Harry's side, but then he thought about the thing that those Muggles did to the boy and it got his blood boiling. Anger filled him and he wanted to kill each and every single one of those people who lived in the house.  
  
"Fine. I will go with you." Sirius said with an anger filled tone that Severus remembered from his days at Hogwarts as a student. Severus nodded that the other man and then spoke again.  
  
"We will leave in a couple of hours, so get ready."  
  
Sirius nodded to the darker man as he left the room. When his glance fell back on Harry his anger welled up even more. Those disgusting Muggles had dared touch his godson like that. Oh they were going to pay. Oh yes they were.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Meanwhile about two hundred miles away in a certain Manor a boy the same age as Harry was sitting down to eat dinner with his family. Draco Malfoy was really everything that the rumors floating around Hogwarts said that he was. He was a proud pureblood wizard from a dark family, a proud Slytherin who hated Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers with the same passion as a Gryffindor hated the Dark Lord.  
  
But the only thing that wasn't true about the rumors was that he really didn't hated Harry Potter. Yes he was angry with him for choosing a Weasley over him, a Weasley of all people, and every time Harry would do or say something insulting about Draco or his family his anger only raised more, but he didn't hate Harry.  
  
Harry was too Slytherin to be a true Gryffindor and with that strong Slytherin part to Harry, Draco knew that he could bring Harry over to the Slytherin way of thinking sooner or later, with the right amount of... seducing, he could have Harry and would present him to his Master.  
  
Yes, that was the plan that he had been cooking up for the last month. It would start slow, but sooner or later he would have Harry. The boy won't know what hit him, and when he presented Harry to the Dark Lord he would be rewarding beyond his wildest dreams with power beyond that of his own father.  
  
That was what he was thinking as he sat at the dinner table having a polite dinner with his parents. His mother sat across the table from him eating her food with a regal air that always amazed him, how could she look like royalty in everything she did. She even look like calm composed royalty even when she was having sex, and Draco knew this because he would watch his mother have sex with her lovers when she thought that Lucius and Draco were out.  
  
He knew that most children would winkle their noses and try to picture anything else than their parents having sex, but for Draco he actually got off when he would watch other people have sex it didn't matter who it was. He just loved to watch the beautiful act of people having sex. The way the people would moan out the other person's name (hopefully). The way the bodies arched and the wonderful sounds that came from people having sex.  
  
Now don't take him wrong, he love to do the act as much or even more that watching someone else do it, but he still love to watch. He first watched his mother when he came back from Hogwarts in the summer between his third and fourth year. He had accidentally walked in on his mother in bed with someone other than his father.  
  
He was frozen at the doorway for what seemed like hours just watching the two of them pleasure each other in ways that Draco would have never thought about. Before either of the two people in bed knew that he was there, he closed the door carefully and went to his room to relief his own aching erection. The next year at Hogwarts he was probably the most over sexed person among the students and even the Professors. It didn't matter who it was, what house they were in or even what sex they were. If they could pleasure him it was good enough.  
  
He didn't care who knew what he was doing, because he knew that no one would openly call him on it. He was one of the pure bloods, upper class students in school and they were only rumors, not proof. He knew all too well how to stop rumors about him. By creating rumors that are more scandalizes about someone else, and he had the perfect rumor this year.  
  
He was going to tell everyone a great and foolproof lie about Harry Potter. He was going to make everyone turn their backs on him, so that the only person he could come to was Draco. It was going to be perfect. He was thinking about that as two owls flew through the window.  
  
One went to Draco and the other one went to his father. The one that went to his father was the owl that always brought the Daily Prophet and the one that went to Draco was a Hogwarts school owl that had brought this years letter with the booklists and announcements about who will be prefects starting this year. He knew by how big the letter was that he was the new Slytherin prefect, but this year the letters were heavier that usual.  
  
He opened his letter and the first thing that came out of the envelope was the beautiful new golden prefects badge. He looked it over a couple of times with a smirk that would rival the ones that Professor Snape would give to the Gryffindors when he took away house points.  
  
He carefully placed the badge on the table next to his plate and then pulled out the pieces of parchment that where left in the envelope. The first piece was his formal letter to Hogwarts and his congratulations on becoming a prefect, the next piece of parchment was his book list, and the next was more interesting there was two parts to this letter.  
  
The first part was an announcement about the coming school year. It seemed that there was going to be a resorting of a couple of people who were fifth years or higher. Their names would be picked at the welcoming feast and they will be resorted into their new houses after the first years were sorted into theirs. Draco looked at this announcement with disbelief.  
  
This was an outrage. What if his name was picked would he have to go to a new house, but then he saw the last sentence in the announcement telling the students that if their name was picked that there was a chance that they could be sorted back into their original house. Draco breathed a sigh of relief. Good because there was no way that he was leaving Slytherin house.  
  
His mother must have seen his expression of relief on his face, because she ask him was the matter was.  
  
"Well mother they have this announcement letter they gave out to the students." He said as he looked down at the piece of parchment and as he started to tell his mother about the first announcement he started to read the second announcement. "They want to resort about eight students fifth year and up in order to promote Interhouse Relation."  
  
Draco stopped explaining and gasped as he read the second announcement. When he was finished with it he dropped the parchment on the table and a shaky hand covered his mouth. He stared down at the parchment ignoring the worried expressions on his mother and father's face. His skin was paler than usual.  
  
"What is it Draco?" he heard his father say, but he didn't know how to answer. He just kept on staring at the parchment until his father picked it up and read it for himself.  
  
"What is it Lucius?" his mother asked his father.  
  
"How could this be? Potter dead?" gasped Lucius.  
  
"What?" Mrs. Malfoy asked.  
  
"Right here is says. 'All students are invited to the funeral of Harry James Potter, which will be held on the day the term starts. Those of you who will be attending will be excused from classes. Harry Potter was kidnapped from his relative's house and was soon after killed. It will be a closed casket due to the fact that the boy's body has not yet been found. He will be buried at the Hogwarts cemetery so that he can be close to the place that he always considered his home." Lucius stopped and arched his eyebrow. "Well if they don't have a body then how do they know that he is indeed dead?"  
  
There was a heavy silence in the Malfoy dining room as Lucius thought about his question careful, as did Draco. His father had a point, how did they know that Harry was dead if they didn't have a body. Not long after Lucius asked the question he excused himself from the table and headed for the nearest fireplace. He was gone with a flash of green light, leaving Draco and his mother to think about the question.  
  
"Well if you are not dead, Potter, then where are you?" Draco thought to himself as he looked thoughtfully at the parchment, which was signed by the Headmaster himself. "Where are you?" 


	8. Chapter Seven: Tears They Fall

I'm so tried of being her,   
  
Suppressed by all my childish fears,   
  
And if you have to leave,   
  
I wish that you would just leave,   
  
Because your presence still lingers here,   
  
And I won't leave me along  
  
These wounds won't seem to heal,   
  
This pain is just too real,   
  
There's just too much that time cannot erase,  
  
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears,   
  
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears,   
  
And I've held your hand through all of these years,   
  
But you still have all of me  
  
You used to captivate me,   
  
By your resonating light,   
  
But now I'm bound by the life you left behind,   
  
Your face it haunt my once pleasant dreams,   
  
Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me  
  
These wounds won't seem to heal,   
  
This pain is just too real,   
  
There's just too much that time cannot erase  
  
When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears,   
  
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears,   
  
And I've held your hand through all of these years,   
  
But you still have all of me.  
  
I've tried so heard to tell myself that you're gone,   
  
And though you're still with me,   
  
I've been alone all along  
  
-My Immortal, Evanscence  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is a Powerful Thing  
  
Chapter Seven: Tears They Fall  
  
By: MostEvilKitten  
  
September first was always an interesting day for the students of Hogwarts. The news students would meet new people and be sorted into their new houses, and the older students would get to see their friends again and made new ones. But unknown to all of the students, this day would be even more interesting then the pervious years.  
  
Well maybe all except Draco Malfoy. He could feel something coming, something big, and yet he didn't know what it could be as he walked through the train station to the Hogwarts Express. He watched everything around him to see if he could find out what would happen, but all he saw where sorrowful people walking around in a haze of mourning and he knew that they were all mourning over the so-called death of Harry Potter.  
  
Draco wouldn't mourn Harry, and most people thought that it was because he hated Potter with a passion, but that wasn't it. No, he knew that Harry wasn't death. He could fell it, but he didn't know how he could feel it. He was thinking about it as he walked down the platform towards the train, but his thoughts were broken by a painful cry somewhere to his right. He turned quickly taking out his wand to see what was wrong.  
  
On the platform, the crowd seemed to move away from a small group of people in the middle of it. Draco looked over to see the redheaded family standing there and the youngest male of the family was holding a crying curly haired girl. He knew that the 'news' of Harry Potter's death must be hitting the Weasley family and Hermione pretty hard. They were like his family and they would feel his death the most. Draco, as well as everyone else on the platform, sat there for a minute watching the group cry in sorrow. All that could be heard was the desperate wails of Hermione and the whispered words of comfort from Ron, telling her that everything would be all right and it would be okay.  
  
Even though many people on the platform where comforted by the words, Draco how ever, wasn't. He knew that it wasn't going to be all right, that something terrible had happened, and even if Harry were still alive, they would never be the same.  
  
Becoming increasingly uncomfortable by this display Draco climbed onto the train pushing past people who all had stopped to watch that Granger girl cry in the Weasel's arms. He found an empty compartment and sat down quickly. He relaxed into the seat with a sigh. He felt as if the world was falling apart around him and there was something that he could do to fix it, but he had no idea what that could be and if frustrated him.  
  
Draco sighed again as he tried to still his though in the peacefulness of the quiet compartment. He loved to sit in silence and just think, but for some reason today he could do it. There was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind trying to tell him something, but he didn't know what that could be. After a couple more minutes of trying to quiet his thoughts he gave up and took out this mornings copy of the Daily prophet that he had brought with him.  
  
Harry's 'death' had been the headline of the Prophet for weeks, and then a couple weeks ago the headlines changed, but not that far away for Harry. It seemed that two mysterious cloaked figures had been seen at the boy's relative's house. The two had gone in and killed Harry's Aunt and Uncle with a particular nasty dark curse. Harry's whale of a cousin was in St. Mungo's for being sent mad by the Cruico curse.  
  
This made almost everyone believe that Harry had died at the hands of a Death Eater, for why would dark wizards want to kill Harry's relatives if Harry were already dead. 'Why indeed?' Thought Draco many times over. Draco had been trying to think of all the things that could of happened, and where Harry could possibly be, but nothing made sense to him. He was missing some important information, but what?  
  
What really got to him was how calm all the Death Eaters and even Voldemort himself seemed. Draco would think that if Voldemort had captured or even killed the boy that he would be gloating about, and if someone else had done it he would be angry that he wasn't able to do it. But according to his father, Voldemort seemed to waiting for something, as if he knew exactly where the boy was, but he wasn't telling any of his Death Eaters. This unsettled Draco.  
  
What also unsettled Draco was the fact that Dumbledore, in all his wisdom about the Gryffindor Golden Boy, believed the boy dead. Did they think that Harry was that easy to kill that some random Death Eater could kill The-Boy-Who-Lived? Draco read somewhere that there was a ward put on Harry that would tell the Headmaster if Harry was death or not, but that would also mean that the Headmaster would know if Harry was close to death or uneven had a small cut. Wouldn't it?  
  
What little he knew about protective wards from his father, that if you had a ward on someone that told you about there health status that you would know about everything that happened to them physically. Was that what alerted the Headmaster to the boy's house in the first place, or was it something else. Draco was missing so much information.  
  
Draco sat there for a while thinking and reading the Prophet in peace until the door of the compartment slid open and a group of Slytherins walked in talking loudly. They sat down barely acknowledging that Draco was there as they sat in the empty seats. Crabbe and Goyle sat across from him arguing amongst themselves about Quidditch, Blaise Zabini (A/N: Doesn't anyone know for sure if Blaise is male or female? Well I am making her a female.) and Morgan MacFay were talking about wizarding cosmetics compared to Muggle cosmetics, or some such rot.  
  
Draco glared at them for a moment and was about to say something to them about interrupting his peace when the door opened again and Pansy Parkinson walked in. She was changed a lot for the summer. She grew a few inches and was almost as tall as him. She was no longer the pug face girl from second year. Her features had softened out and she was quit beautiful with her cool blue eyes and her long dark brown hair. She was wearing her school uniform in a certain way that made her look like a natty schoolgirl, minus the lollipop. Her short pleated skirt was so short that you could almost see her underwear (if she was wearing any). Her white button up shirt was almost like second skin as it hugged every curve of her body, which made her bust show suggestively. Pansy had breast that could revival any of the seventh years.  
  
Her eyes fell onto Draco and she gave him a rather sexy smile that made his eyebrow shot up in interest (that wasn't the only thing that shot up.). She crossed the compartment to sit next to him. Her movements were graceful and deliberate, as if aware of every movement she made. When she sat down next to him she leaned into him and whispered something in his ear that made him smirk at her. Crabbe and Goyle saw this and said something rather rude to the two of them. This suddenly angered Draco extremely.  
  
"Well no one invited you in this compartment! You guys just walked in!" yelled Draco and he stormed out of the compartment leaving a slightly confused group of Slytherins. Pansy followed him out and was trying to get his attention, but he was so angry he wasn't listening or even watching where he was going. Thinking he lost Pansy he turned to see for sure when he ran into someone knocking both of them down.  
  
"HEY!" yelled a familiar voice. Draco jumped up and reached down to help whoever it was off the ground when a flash of red stopped him.  
  
"Oh its you." Said Draco as Ron stood up and brushed himself off. Ron looked at Draco, gray eyes meet brown, and Draco had to turn away from Ron's stare. There was just too much emotion in those brown eyes. "Sorry" Draco whispered quickly as he pushed by Ron, leaving a very confused Gryffindor behind.  
  
Draco walked on trying o find an empty compartment, but they all seemed to be full. Towards the back of the train he still couldn't find any that were empty. He pasted by compartment find compartment and even one that had a little sign on it that said 'out of order'. He stopped and looked at the sign, with strangely familiar handwriting on it.  
  
"How can a compartment on a train be out of order?" he thought to himself. The windows had been magically darken as if there was nothing but darkness in the compartment, but Draco could feel a small amount of magic around the windows and he knew that someone had put it there.  
  
"A great way to get people to ignore the compartment." He thought. Deciding to take a look inside he went to see if the door was locked and found that the door slid open easily. He walked in and the door slid closed behind him. Draco quickly turned to open the door again, but found it locked.  
  
"Damn." He cursed himself for his stupidity. "Why am I acting like a fucking Gryffindor?" Then he turned into the compartment and started to study it. The compartment seemed empty and there was nothing wrong with anything. He went to a seat and looked at it for a minute before sitting in it slowly, seeing if there was anything wrong with it. After sitting in the seat for a moment he decided that there was nothing wrong with the compartment besides the door that locked him in.  
  
He looked around the empty compartment to find that it was not so empty. In one of the overhead compartment there was a Hogwarts trunk. "So someone is trying to hide out in here." He whispered as he looked around again to see if he missed something else. Seeing nothing he pulled the trunk out from its compartment and put it on the floor.  
  
There were no markings on the trunk other than the Hogwarts seal. No name or initials or anything else that would give him a clue as to who this trunk belonged. It looked like a first year trunk, but a first year couldn't do the charms and enchantments it took to fix up the compartment so that no one came in.  
  
Draco opened the trunk and laughed that it had to a trusting Gryffindork's trunk, because it was unlocked. He looked at the small amount of things that were in the trunk only to be confused more. There were fifth year books in the trunk, but only fifth year books. Most people brought all of their books in order to review, especially fifth years with the O.W.Ls coming up, but this person hadn't brought their other books.  
  
Draco picked up a robe to see what house this person was in only to find that the robes had the Hogwarts seal on it and not a House seal. "What the hell?" said Draco. Draco looked through the trunk a little more to find a wand, but that didn't tell him whose trunk this was.  
  
He stood up looked down at the trunk in confusion when he heard the door slid. As quickly as he could he turned to get the door before it closed only to watch as it clicked shut.  
  
"Draco Malfoy!" said Pansy Parkinson who stood before him her hands on her hips looking at him with an angry fire in her eyes. "Why are you running away from me?"  
  
"I just wanted some peace and quiet."  
  
"Well I saw you come in here and I wanted o talk to you, but if you want to be left alone I guess I will go." She said and turned to leave, but the door won't open.  
  
"I guess that is the reason that there was an out of order sign on the door. The door is locked from the outside." Sighed Draco as he sat down in the seat he was in before. Pansy turned back to him and smiled at him.  
  
"Well I guess we are stuck here together until someone lets us out." She said huskily. Draco smirked at her.  
  
"I guess so." Said Draco as he stood and moved closer to her.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Ron walked into the compartment that he was sharing with his twin brothers, his little sister, Hermione and the other Gryffindor fifth year boys. He was still slightly confused about Draco and why he had apologized for knocking him over, but when he had entered the compartment he forgot all his confusion, as he looked at all the faces of mourning people that were in the compartment.  
  
When Ron had first heard about Harry he thought that it was some sick joke that Fred and George were playing on him, but when he heard his mother crying in the kitchen and noticed the unshed tears that were in the corner of his brothers' eyes it hit him. His best friend was dead.  
  
It felt as if his soul was ripped out of his body leaving nothing but an empty shell in its place. He hadn't cried for his friend. It wasn't that he was to proud to cry, it was that he feared that if he started to cry that he would never be able to stop, so he became the pillar of strength that everyone else needed.  
  
Hermione hadn't stopped crying since she found out, and earlier today when he saw the beautiful scarlet train that was the Hogwarts express she began to cry even more. Ron was always there to comfort her telling her that everything would be all right, hoping that she would believe his words even if he didn't.  
  
Ginny hadn't spoken to anyone since she found out. Now she sat around staring at things, with the sadness look Ron had ever seen, it was heart breaking to look at her.  
  
The twins would whisper to each other about something important that they would have to do to honor the fallen hero of their business. Ron never quite understood exactly what they meant by that, but he knew it had something to do with the money that they all of a sudden had to fund their joke business.  
  
The other people in the compartment where the other fifth year Gryffindor boys, they were all sitting around trying to comfort the Weasleys and Hermione the best they could but every now and then Ron would see a tear fall from one of them as hey were still dealing with their friend's death.  
  
It was hard for all of them to come to terms with Harry's death. It seemed as if he simply couldn't die. He had lived through so many things before that it was almost as if Harry was immortal and couldn't die. But now that Ron thought about it no one thought he would truly live to graduate Hogwarts either.  
  
It was a paradox that confused Ron and made him fell even more guilty than he already did. He felt that he was somehow responsible for Harry's death, but he didn't know why. He hadn't killed Harry, but there had to be something he could have done or said to stop what had happened. There had to of been. People just didn't die for no reason!  
  
Ron could fell the tears in his throat choking him. He swallowed them back down as he sat next to Hermione taking her hand in his. She leaned into him and put her head on his shoulder. He could fell her shake as she cried again.  
  
He sat there thinking about the empty bed that would sit next to him and even if someone else came to fill it, it still would be empty just like he felt. Ron closed his eyes for a second and all he could see was Harry flying cross the Quidditch field with reckless abandon laughing all the way. He quickly opened his eyes not wanting to see that right now. The tears were back in his throat again.  
  
Then he leaned forward placing his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands trying with all his will not to cry. Neville sensed something was wrong and tried to help by asking Ron if he wanted to play a game of chess like he would do with Harry. This was too much form him and for the first time in the long month he cried.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Draco pinned Pansy up against the wall of the compartment their mouths on each other and tongues struggle in a war for dominance. Draco could feel the excitement rising in him as Pansy's hands were trying to memorize every inch of his body.  
  
"Oh Draco I missed you over the summer." Pansy sighed in his mouth.  
  
"I know what you were missing." Draco said coolly as his hand slid down Pansy's side, over her hip and to the hem of her short pleated skirt. Then he slid it under the skirt and up her soft thigh towards her warmth. She gasped as she felt the hand edge closer seeking her pleasure spot and threw her head back with a moan when it was found.  
  
"Oh Draco." She gasped as he started to rub her slowly, then increased the speed and slow down teasing her. He captured her mouth again and their tongue started the battle again. Draco removed his hand and she whimpered at the loss, only for Draco to smirk as he moved her toward a row of seats so they could get into a more... comfortable position.  
  
Pansy's hand slid down Draco's body and cupped his hardened cock that was being repressed by his pants. She started to unzip his pants as she sat down on the seats only to jump up in surprise with a squeal.  
  
"What?" Draco asked. "What's the matter?"  
  
"There is someone on the seat." Pansy cried out.  
  
"What?" Draco said in shock and looked down at the seemingly empty seat as he zipped back up his pants.  
  
"There is someone on the seat. I felt him." Pansy said looking into Draco's eyes pleadingly. She wanted him to do something about it and he knew it.  
  
"Fine." He sighed as he moved closer to the seat without his hand outstretched feeling the seat for the person that was supposed to be there. As his hands got closer to the seat he could feel something silk on the seat. It was odd, he couldn't see anything and yet there was something there. His mind worked quickly as he was trying to divide the situation. Then it came to him. "An Invisibility Cloak."  
  
"An Invisibility Cloak?" questioned Pansy. "But those things are rare, only the most wealthy of pureblood families have them. Who could it be?"  
  
"Well I know that Potter has one." Draco said and lifted and eyebrow. Potter? Draco was thinking and missed the curious look that Pansy had thrown him.  
  
'What did Draco mean 'has' shouldn't he been saying 'had'?' Thought Pansy as she watched Draco a little more closely. He knew something that she didn't and she was going to find out what.  
  
But her thoughts were interrupted as Draco's hand reached out towards the seat and grabbed a hold of the invisibility cloak. He slowly pulled it off the prone form of a person lying on the seat.  
  
The boys that lay there was rather small and seemed as though he was only a first or second year from the back view, as the boy's face was facing into the seat. The boy had shoulder length midnight black hair and his skin, what she could see of it, was almost deathly pale. He was wearing a cloak that was way to big for him, as if he had just grabbed it from his father's wardrobe.  
  
This scene just didn't feel right to Pansy. There was something off about this boy that was lying there in the seat, still as death. She couldn't see if he was breathing or not, which made her start panicking.  
  
"Draco there is something wrong with him." She said nervously. Draco nodded in response as he inched closer to the boy and hand two elegant fingers against the boy's neck.  
  
"He is alive, but." Draco cut off has he looked down at the area of the boy's neck where his fingers rested.  
  
"What is it Draco?" Pansy questioned.  
  
"I am not sure." Said Draco has he turned the boy over to get a better look at him.  
  
"OH MY GOD." Pansy breathed and stepped back as she saw the boys face. Draco was left speechless and the only thing his eye would focus on was the lightening shape scare on the boy's forehead. 


	9. Chapter Eight: Pureblood

Catch me as I fall,   
  
Say you're here and it's all over now,   
  
Speaking to the atmosphere,   
  
No one's here and I fall into myself,   
  
This truth drives me into madness,   
  
I know I can stop the pain if I will it all away  
  
Don't turn away,   
  
Don't give in to the pain,   
  
Don't try to hide,   
  
Though they're screaming your name,   
  
Don't close your eyes God knows what lies behind them,   
  
Never sleep never die  
  
I'm frightened by what I see,   
  
But somehow I know that there's much more to come,   
  
Immobilized by my fear,   
  
And soon to be blinded by tears,   
  
I can stop the pain if I will it all away  
  
Don't turn away,   
  
Don't give in to the pain,   
  
Don't try to hide,   
  
Though they're screaming your name,   
  
Don't close your eyes,   
  
God knows what lies behind them,   
  
Don't turn out the light,   
  
Never sleep never die  
  
Fallen angels at my feet,   
  
Whispered voices at my ear Death before my eyes,   
  
Lying next to me I fear,   
  
She beckons me shall I give in,   
  
Upon my end shall I begin,   
  
Forsaking all I've fallen for I rise to meet the end   
  
-Whisper by Evanescence  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is A Powerful Thing  
  
Chapter Eight: Pureblood  
  
MostEvilKitten  
  
Severus Snape sat quietly in the Professor's Room at Hogwarts listening to the plans for the beginning of the year feast. Well it was more like half listening. Partly because he couldn't stand to listen to the other Professors break down crying half way through their announcements and partly because his mind was else where.  
  
He was thinking about Harry again. Worried because he wasn't sure that the charms he left on the train compartment, where he had left the boy, had worked. He didn't have time to test them before the first students started climbing onto the train.  
  
He was trying to remember the rushed charms and enchantments that he had said, but he wasn't sure if he put all the ones he wanted on the door and windows. If he did put them all on correctly he worked it out that someone would enter the compartment check it out, out of curiosity of the out of order sign that he placed on the door.  
  
He was hoping that it would be on of his Slytherins. Actually he was hoping that it would be Draco Malfoy. Draco was smart enough not to be fooled by the sign on the door, and knowledgeable enough to know what to do when he found Harry laying on the bench in the compartment.  
  
But! Wait! Did he forget something? There was something in the back of his mind that was nagging at him, but what was it? He remembered putting on the locking charm on the inside of the door incase Harry woke before someone could get to him. Severus didn't want Harry wondering around the train in the state that he would be in after being in a magically induced coma for the past couple of weeks.  
  
Some of his wounds still were not healed, as were some of the bruises. He didn't want Harry to injure himself even more, so he put the locking charm on the inside of the door with a time release on it so that the door would whoever was in there out when the train pulled up to the station in Hogsmeade.  
  
He knew he remembered that he placed the charms on the window so no one could see into the compartment and a silence charm so no one outside could hear what was happening inside.  
  
What was he forgetting? Severus stretched his memory back trying to remember every detail. He remember laying Harry down on the bench with his invisibility cloak on him, then putting each charm on the compartment and by that time the students where starting to get on the train so he had to rush off leaving Harry in the compartment with the.  
  
Oh! He forgot to take Harry's invisibility cloak off him. If Draco were to go into the compartment he might make it all the way to Hogsmeade with even knowing Harry was there. That would put a dent in his plans. He might have to go down to the station to make sure that everything went the right way, because if they didn't then some of the true of all that happened might come out and he really didn't want that.  
  
"Now lets move on to the next object on the agenda for today's meeting, events surround the disappearance of our young Mr. Potter." Announced Dumbledore, interrupting Severus' thoughts, and a chorus of cries sounded around the room that made Severus roll his eyes slightly. "The real troubling thing about this is the fact that his relatives were killed after he was taken. Does anyone have any ideas as to why a Death Eater would return to the house and kill the relatives after they had taken Harry?"  
  
"Wasn't it the simple fact that they were Muggles was it?" asked Severus and Dumbledore looked at him pointedly. A couple of the other Professors nodded in agreement, Death Eaters killed Muggles, the Dursleys were Muggles it was a logical conclusion.  
  
But Severus knew that it wasn't Death Eaters that killed the Dursleys, everyone just assumed that it was Death Eaters. No one wanted to think otherwise. They didn't want to know what actually happened to the Dursleys, but Severus knew. He knew because he was the one to kill all three of those foul Muggles.  
  
Sirius and him went to the house to collect Harry's things only to find out that the Dursleys that burned most of his possessions. Severus then forced them all to take Veritasium. He made that tell them everything that they had done to Harry over the years, and it took quite awhile for them to finish. By the time the Dursleys had finished Sirius was extremely pale. He, himself, had been through a lot in Azkaban but he could never imagine anything that Harry had gone through.  
  
The boy was never really allowed to be a child. He was forced to do chores as soon as he could walk and talk and even made to start cooking their food at the age of five, when most kids were out playing with their friends, but Harry had no friends. Why not? Because when he wasn't doing chores or cooking the food he was locked in his cupboard under the stairs. The boy hardly got anything to eat; he would go almost a week before he was 'allowed' any food.  
  
It was only by law were they made to let Harry go to school. If a social worker didn't come to the house informing them that Harry must attend public school, the Dursley wouldn't have let to boy out. Even then the boy was bullied at school, and every little thing that went wrong around the house was blamed on him. Even if he wasn't around, it was still his fault, which earned the boy a good beating to 'beat' the wickedness out of him.  
  
Severus couldn't believe his ears when he heard that particular statement. How could anyone do that to a child, in the wizarding world, since most pureblood families only had one heir it was unheard of to touch a child so. In fact there were extreme laws punishing whoever did abuse a child. There was actually a law that allowed the blood relatives of the child to kill the attackers off their children. That was the reason that Voldemort had killed whole families, to avoid the retribution of the other members on the family.  
  
Both Sirius and Severus were so angered by what they heard they began cursing all three of them with all the curses they could think of. But then Severus got an idea. He would make them feel actually what they did to Harry over the years. It was a simple retribution curse that he learned in his many years as a spy. It made the person being curse to feel every single blow, every single injury that they inflicted on a person.  
  
Severus cast the spell on all three at the same time so that they all could feel it, but it seemed that it was too much for them, and all that pain in those few moments were greater that any Cruico curse and it had killed them. After they died the two wizards looked down at the corpse of the three and Severus heard Sirius say "They got what they dissevered. The Muggle pieces of trash." That statement took Severus aback; sure he had heard something like that for many years, but form Death Eaters.  
  
When he heard one of the great Gryffindor golden boys say it, it caught him by surprise. Could things have changed so much that Dumbledore, who knew about the things that went on in this house, be the evil one, and Voldemort, the mass murder of Muggles, be the one would was right. His world, which was once black and white, that turned to shades of gray, had deeper shades now than every before. Everything was changing. The world wasn't has he had thought.  
  
After he had collected the rest of his facilities he searched the house once last time to see if they had left anything behind and while he was in the room that he found Harry, which was now cleaned and things were moved back in as if Harry had never been there, he found that one of the floorboards were loose. When he checked it he found the broken pieces of Harry's wand and James' invisibility cloak. Severus smiled at the boy; he was at least smart enough to hide the more important things away.  
  
As the two wizards left the house Sirius asked Severus to shot the Dark Mark over the house to make it look like Death Eaters. Severus laughed at that and told Sirius that he had just attended his first Death Eater raid, to which Sirius just smirked and walked away.  
  
"Well that concludes the meeting for today." Minvera McGonagall's voice interrupted his thoughts. "We should get ready for the arrival of the students." The other Professors stood from their seats and left the room leaving Severus sitting there by himself. He would soon head down to the station and watch the children get off the train. He would make sure that someone, anyone, found Harry. He would not leave the boy to fate like so many other people had done.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Draco looked down at the small figure laying on the seat, in shock. He could believe what he was looking at. The boy didn't look any bigger than that of a first year. But what really shocked Draco was that Harry only had a pair of too big, blood stained Muggle sweatpants, and he could see fading bruises all across the boy's body, along with half heal buts that might turn into scars.  
  
"Oh My God." Breathed Pansy. "What happened to him?"  
  
"I am not sure, but by the look of those cuts I think that someone has been trying to heal him." Draco said with a hint of confusion in his voice.  
  
"But they said that he was dead. They said that a Death Eater took him from his relatives. Why would a Death Eater want to heal him?" Pansy was trying to make sense of the scene in front of her.  
  
"I don't know why, but these wounds look a month or so old. How long ago was Harry taken from his relatives?" Draco questioned Pansy. Something just flashed into his head. He had once heard Harry begged the Headmaster not to return to his relative's house for the summer. At the time he didn't know why Harry would be so desperate, but now seeing him like this everything added up.  
  
"About a month ago." Pansy answered Draco's question. Then Draco gave her a pointed look. Suddenly Pansy got a calculating look on her face as she went through all the information she had just received. Then the calculating looked disappeared into one of shock. "You don't mean to say that his relatives did this to him? I mean Death Eaters, yes, but his own family?"  
  
"Pansy they are Muggles, you don't think that they would do something like this?" Draco said. Pansy knew that Draco fully believed in the whole pureblood stuff, but she never really believed it. That was maybe until now seeing the prefect Gryffindor Golden Boy like this. If it was indeed his family who did this to him then it was going to be her mission to see that someone paid for this outrage.  
  
To abuse a child! In the wizarding world it was unheard of, but she knew that it happened in the Muggle world. But this was the heir to one of the ancient and powerful houses of the wizarding world, and to have its only heir abused like this was beyond an outrage and something had to be done.  
  
She stood there for a while watching Harry sleep on the seat. He looked so small and vulnerable, like a little brother. She wanted to protect him. As she watched she noticed him stir, shivering as if he were cold. But of course he was cold he was only wearing a pair of thin sweatpants.  
  
"Draco." Her voice broke a long silence and Draco looked in her direction.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Do you think we could get something for him to wear? I think he might be cold." She said. Draco looked at her for a moment a bit off guard at what she said, but then an idea came to him.  
  
'Of course this was a way to get to Harry. To make it look as if he really cared, to help him through this trying time.' He thought. It was a good plan, but what was that feeling in the back of his mind when he looked at the bruised and broken Harry in front of him, it wasn't that he actually cared about him? Was it?  
  
"Sure." He said to Pansy and then went to the truck he was checking earlier to find a pair of school uniform pants and a plan white shirt with a sweater vest. He went to Harry and with Pansy's help they dressed him, amazed at how light the boy was.  
  
When they were done they sat down in the seat across from Harry, watching him anxiously. As the train traveled on the sky outside began to become darker and darker, and the two Slytherins wondered if the boy would ever wake, or if there was something seriously wrong with him.  
  
Sometime towards the end of the train ride Draco and Pansy both feel asleep exhausted from worry. Draco was dreaming about how he finally beat the Mudblood Granger out in the class standings when he heard a terrified yell that brought him back to the land of the living.  
  
He opened his eyes to find Harry sitting at the farthest corner of the compartment. His knee drawn up to his chest with his arms wrapped around them. He was rocking back and forth slightly and his breathing was slightly irregular. Draco could tell the boy was scared and confused by the way he was looking around the compartment in wide-eyed horror.  
  
Draco shifted at little to get a better look at Harry and Harry noticed the movement. His head snapped to see what moved only to find Draco's eyes on him.  
  
"Harry?" Draco whispered and stood up. "Harry, are you okay?" Draco took a step forward only to find Harry tighten up in his ball. Draco retreated a step to keep the space between him and Harry. Pansy stirred behind him and she looked up at Harry.  
  
"Oh Harry you are finally awake." Pansy said sweetly and smiled at the boy. Harry looked at the girl in confusion.  
  
"Draco?" Harry whispered in a hoarse voice.  
  
"Yes Harry?" Draco answered.  
  
"Where am I?"  
  
"You are on the Hogwarts Express Harry. We are on our way to school." Draco informed the Gryffindor.  
  
"How did I get here?" Harry questioned.  
  
"I don't know Harry. You were already here when I got here." Draco looked at Harry in worry. "You mean you don't know how you got here?"  
  
Harry shook his head. "No. The last thing I remember was I was in my room at my relative's house. I think I fell asleep and now I am here in a compartment on a train a month later with you two." Harry looked at them suspiciously. There was a short silence as Pansy and Draco looked at each other and then back at Harry not knowing exactly what to say. "I guess I missed my birthday as well." Harry put in. Then fell silent and stared out the window.  
  
Draco sat down next to Pansy and the whisper between each other debating whether to tell Harry that everyone thought he was death or not. After a while of the whispering Harry started to become annoyed at the two Slytherins.  
  
"What are you two scheming of ways off me or something?" He shot at them. The two looked up in dismay.  
  
"No Harry we aren't scheming we are debating for you information." Said Draco falling back into the arch-rival role.  
  
"Okay fine are you two debating whether to off me or not?" He retorted. Pansy looked over to Draco and nodded at the blonde and Draco nodded back at her.  
  
"Harry?" Draco said softly.  
  
"Hmm?" Harry answered looking Draco straight in the eye.  
  
"Harry I have to tell you something. This is about... well this is about what happened in the last month." Said Draco and Harry looked at him with interest. "Now I don't know the details or where exactly you have been for the last month, but I know what everyone had been saying about you. You see Harry; everyone thinks that Death Eaters kidnapped you from your relatives' house and that you are... well Harry everyone thinks that you are... dead."  
  
Harry looked at the boy bemused. "That is not funny Draco. What is this some kind of junior Death Eater joke. Uh? Well it is seriously not funny." Harry fumed.  
  
"But Harry he isn't joking." Pansy stood up and put her hand on Draco's shoulder. "It was all over the Prophet. That you were dead, even Dumbledore said you were. He had this ward on the house that would late him if you were alive or not."  
  
"What!" Harry yelled and stood up. "What are you talking about Dumbledore had a ward up on my house?"  
  
"Harry." Draco said trying to calm the boy down. "Harry he had a ward up on your house to tell him if you were alive or not and if you were alright."  
  
Harry felt his knees go weak. "Draco do you know if this ward would tell him if I was injured in anyway?"  
  
Draco thought for a minute trying to remember what his father told him about ward of this nature before he answer. "Yes Harry general with wards of this kind the Headmaster would be advised to whether you were healthy or not, but to what extend I am not sure." Draco explained and then it clicked in his head why Harry was so upset with this information.  
  
If his relatives were abusing Harry and the Headmaster had a ward up on the house telling him whether Harry was alive or not, then the Headmaster had to know something was going on in that house. He looked a Harry in horror as the boy slowly sat back down in the corner he was in earlier.  
  
He could see that Harry was thinking hard about something and in that moment he wished that he would heard Harry's thoughts. If Draco could heard Harry's thought he would have heard something about how even Dumbledore thought he was a murderer and had to be punished.  
  
Harry looked back out the window watching everything go by not wanting to talk to the two Slytherins, not even wanting to look at them. He just wanted to curl up and died, no one would even notice that he wasn't really death to beginning with.  
  
He wanted it all to be over, for him to finally have some peace, but then he knew that he was being selfish and he knew that he had to be punished for being the murderer that he was. Even Dumbledore knew this. That is why he felt Harry at the Dursley's when he knew that they were hitting him, because he was evil and a murderer and needed to be punished for his crimes, but still that didn't make it any easier for him to deal with.  
  
"Harry?" Pansy's shaky voice came through his thoughts. "Harry can I ask you something?"  
  
"Go ahead." Harry whispered.  
  
"Harry all those cuts and bruises on your body did... did your relatives do that to you?" she asked. Harry nodded  
  
Harry was still looking out the window with a blank expression as he thought about the Dursleys. His blood became to boil that the thought of his disgusting over weight cousin, his horse faced Aunt and his drunken Uncle. They were what he had hated since he found out about Hogwarts. They were everything that he hated.  
  
Harry felt the anger rise inside him. Such anger as he had only known for Voldemort, but now it was for the Dursleys as well. It was building up so much that he thought it was going to explode until a image on a silver flower flashed in his mind.  
  
"They are not wizards they don't understand. They just can't understand our world." Harry said, not even thinking about what he was saying. As if it was something that he had been taught to say since he was little. Draco and Pansy looked at each other in shock. Did they just hear the Boy-Who- Lived say something for the pureblood movement? Was he saying something against Muggles?  
  
Draco smiled to himself. Oh this was going to be easier than he thought. Someone is already starting to get to him about the pureblood movement, or was it was his father's pureblood was boiling inside him wanting to be let out. Draco didn't know, but he was really happy about this. "Wait till father hears about this one." Draco thought to himself. "And so my plan begins." 


	10. Chapter Nine: Not As Death As I Feel

I feel like I am in a daze,  
  
Like I am buzzing off some wine,  
  
As if the fates are trying to tell me  
  
Something is very wrong,  
  
And I just don't know it yet.  
  
The three of them will watch me  
  
Stumbling through live,  
  
And as one of there sick jokes  
  
They will throw me a curve ball,  
  
And laugh as I struggle through it.  
  
That is why the fates are so cruel.  
  
-MostEvilKitten 'The Fates'  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is A Powerful Thing  
  
Chapter Nine: Not as Dead as I Feel  
  
By: MostEvilKitten  
  
The train had stop at Hogsmeade station a while ago and they could hear everyone get off the train. Harry watched out the window as Hagrid took the first years towards the boats. Then he watched the older students piled into the horseless carriages Pansy and Draco had explained to Harry how they manager to come into the compartment and was stuck there until the spells on the door wore off.  
  
As the last carriage full of students headed for the castle the door swung open with a bang. All three of them looked at the door happily. They wanted out of the stuffy compartment. They walk out of the compartment just as the old lady is the food cart came down the isle making sure that everyone was off.  
  
"You three need to hurry before all the carriages leave you." she began, but suddenly stopped when she saw Harry standing there. She became as white as a sheet and fainted dead away.  
  
"Well I guess we better hurry then." Said Pansy as she stepped over the fainted form of the food crate lady. Harry watched in shock as Pansy walked away without a care and Draco followed close behind her. He stood there for a few minutes more before shaking his head and following them off the train.  
  
When Harry got off the train he notice that there was still one carriage left for them and that Pansy and Draco were already climbing into it. Harry stood there for a moment looking around the stations. It was completely empty. Not a soul in sight. A slight breeze past by and Harry noticed a small piece of parchment slowly float towards him carried on the breeze.  
  
The parchment landed at his feet and he looked down at it curiously before keeping it up and reading it. It was an announcement that there would be a funeral for him the next day and that everyone at Hogwarts was welcome to attend.  
  
'So Draco and Pansy were telling me the truth then.' He thought to himself as he looked back at the carriage just in time to see Draco's head pop out of the window to look for him. When Draco saw that Harry was standing back on the platform he waved Harry towards the carriage so that they could be on their way. 'What am I going to do about everyone when they realize that I am not dead?' He began to panic.  
  
He left as if the whole world was caving in on him. Suddenly his knees gave out from under him and the next thing he knew was that he was sitting on the hard wooden floor of the platform. Draco who had been watching this jumped out of the carriage and ran towards Harry.  
  
"Are you alright?" Draco asked as he went to help Harry off the floor. Harry shook his head. No, he wasn't all right, how could any of this be all right. His friends and family thought he was death. He had been missing for over a month and even he didn't know where he was. He had been living with abusive relatives all his life and Dumbledore knew about it. How could this be all right?  
  
For a moment he just sat there and stared at the parchment announcing to everyone that he was death. He read it over a couple of times. The writing sound so formal as if whoever wrote it was writing something like a newspaper article that really didn't matter to anyone. Would anyone actually attend his funeral? Would they cry over him? Why would they cry over a murderer?  
  
He had zoned out so much that he didn't even realized that Draco was moving him towards the carriage until he was actually in the seat and they had started towards the school. When he came back to reality he looked up at the two Slytherins who were looking at him in worry whispering to each other about things and Harry didn't even bother to try and listen to what they were saying, it just didn't matter at the moment.  
  
Harry didn't talk to either of the Slytherins on the ride to Hogwarts he just sat there staring out the window deep in thought. Pansy watched him with a painful expression she didn't know what to do at the moment. Although she was a Slytherin and Slytherins knew more about personal pain and loss than the other houses, but she didn't really know how to handle Harry. Most people in Slytherin was there because their parents or family member were either former Death Eaters or dark supporters, it was no secret. Although no came out and said it to their faces really.  
  
Slytherins were like a family, everyone in the house knew something about loss and pain and they all helped each other through the pain and suffering, but something like this that had been going on for so long, that had left such emotional scars, Pansy didn't know how to deal with it. She mentally praised Harry for his great job at acting, because no one had every seen the signs of abuse in all the years that he had gone to Hogwarts.  
  
There were signs through, but may people were always to stuck on the fact that he was the Boy-Who-Lived to see to the real person behind the title and she mentally kicked herself for being one of those people. Looking back at the years she could see it now. When Harry would come back to Hogwarts he would always look a little too skinny and he was get bigger as the year went along only to come back to school the same as before.  
  
He would never go home for the holidays opting to stay at school even if everyone else had left to go home. In classes and when she would see him in the corridors and the library he was always quite and pensive, trying not to be noticed, but failing in that endeavor. Now she could see some of the warning signs that all the Slytherins knew about, but they couldn't fully put together because he was a Gryffindor and all the Gryffindor had they're prefect lives with nothing but happy moments.  
  
She never knew how incredibly wrong she was until she saw Harry laying on the seat on the Hogwarts Express with all those cuts and bruises. She wondered if anyone one else in Gryffindor had lead a live of pain like this, only to think about what she heard from her parents about what happened to the Longbottoms, were they Neville's parent? How could she have been so wrong as to think that the Slytherin house had the corner on loss and suffering? It was just that everyone acted as they did, even the Gryffindors, but now she knew it was only an act.  
  
"He should have been sorted into Slytherin." She whispered to Draco. They had been discussing what they were going to do when they got to the school and the whole student body and most of the staff pass out in shock. Harry had been listening to the conversation and she didn't think he would have heard her comment about his sorting, but he was proven wrong when he turned his head to look at her.  
  
"The sorting hat wanted to put me into Slytherin. It said I would do well in Slytherin, but I was too frightened to go, because everyone told me that Slytherin is where all the dark wizard and witches came from. I didn't want to be known as a dark wizard so I asked the hat to put me into Gryffindor and it did." Harry said simply. "Maybe I should have listened to the hat?" He added.  
  
Draco and Pansy in wide-eyed wonder. They had never heard of anyone actually asking to be put into a different house than that which the hat decided and similarly they had never heard of the hat letting someone into a house in which the hat thought the person wasn't really suited for. So how did Harry do this?  
  
Draco wanted to ask Harry a question about his sorting and if he knew about the resorting that would happen tonight, but Harry went back to staring out the window. Draco watched him for a moment before deciding to tell the Gryffindor anyways.  
  
"Harry I forgot to tell you something else that is important. Well not as important as other things, but something you have to know before we get to the feast and scare everyone to death."  
  
Draco mentally grinned at this. He really wanted to see everyone pass out with shock as the so-called dead Harry walked into the Great Hall escorted by two Slytherins and one of them a Malfoy. It was going to be all too delicious.  
  
"They are starting a new tradition tonight Harry." He continued. "There are going to pick eight people, two from each house, fifth years and up to be resorted into another house, something to do with 'Inter-house Relations'. The eight people are going to be picked at the feast tonight and sorted into another house."  
  
Harry just looked out the window and nodded at Draco, but Harry never said anything else the rest of the way to the school. Draco was getting anxious as the carriage came to a stop jus outside the front doors. Everyone else had already gone into the Great Hall for the beginning feast when they entered the castle. They were standing in front of the doors to the Great Hall when Harry stopped walking as stared at the doors nervously.  
  
"Come on Harry we should go in." said Pansy trying to comfort the boy. Harry looked her in the eye and she could see the pain in them. Harry nodded and Draco pushed the doors open all three of them stepped into the hall to the sound of otter silence.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Remus Lupin, the new/returning Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts was wandering the corridors trying to get everything together as the students would soon be arriving. He was finding it hard to concentrate because his mind kept wandering to Harry, his best friend's son. The boy had lived an every short unhappy live and that made him felt extremely guilty and sad.  
  
When James and Lily died and Sirius was crated off to Azkaban, Remus wanted nothing more then to adopt Harry and raise the child properly, but his status as a werewolf made it impossible. No one in their right mind would ever allow a werewolf to adopt a child, the Ministry wouldn't hear of it. The Ministry also wouldn't let James and Lily made Remus Harry's godfather, which was truly their first choice, so the honor had gone to Sirius.  
  
Remus knew this, although he doubted every much than Sirius ever found out that he was the second one on the list to be Harry's godfather. It was something that ate away at Remus every time he tried to get Dumbledore to at least let Remus visit the boy and was denied every time. Now Harry was dead and there was no way to say the things that he should have said a long time ago.  
  
He should have told Harry everything about his parent and about how much he cared for him when he was the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor in Harry's third year, but he listened to Dumbledore yet again and remain silent. It was so unfair to the boy. Remus could see that Harry wanted nothing more than just to be loved by someone. He knew it but keep the boy at arms length because Dumbledore asked him not to tell Harry anything about his pass, that the boy wasn't ready for that yet.  
  
What a fool he had been to listen to Dumbledore about that. He wished for nothing more than to take it all back, to go back to Harry's third year and tell him everything he wanted to tell him, but that was simply impossible now. He was dead.  
  
Remus couldn't think straight and Sirius wasn't helping him either. Sirius had be running around doing things for Dumbledore, or so he told Remus, and not grieving over the loss of his godson. Remus thought that his was so sort of defense mechanism in order to handle the pain of his loss. He tried to get Sirius to talk to him, but it always ended up with Sirius shouting at Remus and leaving for yet another mission for Dumbledore.  
  
It was hard for Remus trying to get his lesson plans together, especially when planning the fifth year classes. He would find himself wondering what Harry would like to learn this year and then remembering that Harry wouldn't be there. He had to redo all his lesson plans a couple of times because they were unreadable with all the tear stains that were left after tell himself yet again that Harry was with his parents now.  
  
But right now he couldn't think about that. The students were going to arrive shortly and he had to get to the Great Hall in time to greet them. He raced now the corridors towards Great Hall when he heard two voices coming from one of the empty classrooms and moved to investigate them.  
  
"Did you get everything done?" Sirius' voice came to Remus' ears and made him even more curious. What was Sirius doing here?  
  
"Yes everything has been put into motion." Said Severus to Remus' shock. Sirius and Snape working together? This didn't add up. What the hell was going on?  
  
"I just hope everything will turn out all right. I hope that he will wake up from the coma." Said Sirius. Whom could Sirius be talking about?  
  
"Yes the boy should wake up all right. If he doesn't show up by the time all the students are accounted for then I will go down to the train myself and bring him back here." Said Severus.  
  
"I will go with you. I don't think that he will take it to well to see the 'greasy git' when he first wakes up. He needs someone he trust to be there for him and I want to be there for him like I never was before." Sirius' voice was full of sorrow, and Remus wonder who the hell they were talking about. It sounded like they were talking about Harry, but that couldn't be possible.  
  
"I don't think that would be good. It is too public and you might be caught."  
  
"I am his bloody godfather Snape and I am going to be there."  
  
"Just the reason you should not go, because if you get caught when we go down there to get him, then who will be there for him later. Harry is going to need you in the coming month and if you go and get yourself caught you won't be able to be there for him." Said Severus.  
  
This was too much for Remus. They were talking about Harry as if he wasn't death, but how could that be, the ward that told Dumbledore if he was alive or not had stopped working and even Dumbledore thought the boy death. What was going on? Sirius and Severus continued their argument not notice that Remus had stepped into the classroom and was looking at them in shock.  
  
"What are you two saying?" asked Remus and the two dark haired men looked up at the werewolf. "Are you guys saying that Harry is alive, and that he is on the train in some kind of coma? What did you guys do?"  
  
"Remus it is a long story and we don't have that much time. You should be heading for the Great Hall."  
  
"No, I am not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on around here. What happened, and where is Harry?" Remus demanded to know.  
  
"Remus." Said Severus as he stepped forward. "All you need to know right now is that Harry Potter is not death. He is very much alive and is now the train here. Hopefully he will wake from the magically induced coma he as been in for the last month. If not I must go down to the train and bring him back to the hospital wing in order for Madam Pomfrey to have a look at him."  
  
"You. You mean that he is alive?" Remus asked almost on the verge of tears. His hopes and wishes would all come true with one word and they would all come crashing down with another."  
  
"Yes Remus Harry is alive." Said Sirius. Remus felt as if his knees would go out from under him. Harry was alive and Sirius knew it.  
  
"And you didn't tell me earlier Sirius?" Remus began to get angry. "How could you let me think that Harry was death this whole time."  
  
"Remus calm down, I will tell you the whole story later when we have time. You will understand the whys and wherefores later, but now you and Severus must going to the Great Hall and act like you don't know." Said Sirius and Remus looked at him skeptically. "Please Moony, just trust me."  
  
Sirius' voice was pleading and Remus hadn't heard him like that in a long time. Remus agreed to do as Sirius asked, but warned Sirius that if he didn't like the explanation that he would do serious harm to Sirius and all Sirius did was smile at his old friend and nodded.  
  
That was how Remus found himself walking into the Great Hall with Severus by his side and for one was not arguing for the particulars of their past. Remus was silence as the hall started to fill with the returning students and everyone just thought he was still every upset about Harry's death.  
  
The only people Remus watched come in where the Weasleys and Hermione all looking extremely upset and not talking to anyone. Everyone that past them gave them looks of pity before taking there seat at their house tables, wondering who was the unfortunate eight people to be resorted tonight.  
  
As the last of the students came into the hall Remus heard Severus sigh in relief. Then lean toward Remus and whisper that Draco and Pansy were not among the other student. This could only mean that they had found Harry on the train as he had planned. Remus looked at the Potions Master wondering why he had planned for two Slytherins to find Harry and not any of the Gryffindors, especially not Hermione and Ron, but his thoughts where soon interrupted by the door of the Great Hall swinging open. Everyone was waiting for the new first years to come in, but when they all saw the three people standing at the door the Hall went completely silent, because there standing in the doorway was a very pale Harry Potter flanked by two Slytherins, one of the a Malfoy.  
  
Remus watched the Gryffindor table carefully and noticed Ron stand up shakily and slowly walk towards his friend as everyone staring at him. When Ron finally got to the pale boy he whispered in a seemingly frail voice, "Harry?" Harry nodded to this and Ron gathered him up into a bone- crushing hug. It was extremely to sudden for Harry and if one was looking they could see the panic in Harry's eyes, but only a couple people were looking, Draco and Remus.  
  
The panic in Harry's eyes made Remus' breath caught in his throat. What happened to the boy that would have made him react like that? Remus thought for a moment before paling he suddenly knew why Sirius didn't want anyone to know what had happened during the last month. His mind reeled with the thought, hoping to whatever power above him that he was wrong, but one look at Severus seemed to tell him that he was right in his thinking.  
  
Severus was looking at the boy with a sorrowful expression and Remus knew for Severus to actually show emotion in public something terrible had to have happen. Remus closed his eyes for a moment and opened them when he heard Ron speak again.  
  
"But they said that you were dead." Ron's face had a mixture of emotion on it. That of happiness that Harry was back, sadness he still felt from someone telling him that his best friend was death, and also hurt that someone could tell him such a lie, because here was Harry standing in front of him every much alive. "They said that you were dead." He said again still struggling with everything.  
  
Dumbledore was suddenly at their side trying to calm Ron down as everyone in the Great Hall watched on in wonder. "You told everyone that he was dead and obviously he is not, because here he is." Ron yelled at the Headmaster and no one stopped him, or said anything about it.  
  
"That is yet to be seen Mr. Weasley." Said the Headmaster. "I must ask him to come with me for a moment." Dumbledore looked a Harry and Harry nodded to him. Then Dumbledore looked up to the head table and moment for Professor Snape to go with them.  
  
Severus stood up and gave Remus a pointed look as if he wanted Remus to come along with him, so Remus stood with the Potion Master and headed to where the Headmaster was standing. When the two Professors arrived Dumbledore headed out of the door with the three of them in tow. Before they left Remus told Ron to sit back down at the Gryffindor table and Snape motioned for the two Slytherins to head to the Slytherin table and all three did what they were told. As they left the Great Hall a wall of sound erupted from behind them.  
  
As they were heading down the corridor Professor McGonagall was coming to see if everyone was ready for the sorting ceremony but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the three Professors and a supposed dead student walk towards them.  
  
"I am sorry Professor, but there are certain things that we must attend to and the sorting will have to wait until we finish." Dumbledore told McGonagall, and she nodded. "I don't think that we shall take to long with this."  
  
"Yes Headmaster." She said and retreated back to the room with all of the first years in it. The four of them walked to an empty classroom near the Great Hall where they could have some privacy. When they got into the room Remus showed Harry to a seat while Snape and Dumbledore whispered by the door, only to have Severus disappear form the room for a few minutes. When he arrived back at the classroom he was carrying a small bottle of clear liquid.  
  
"Now Harry in order for us to tell if this is the real Harry Potter we are going to have to give you a truth potion. It is a weaker potion and you will only be able to answer with a yes or a no. This potion will only last about five to ten minutes. Do you understand?" ask Dumbledore and Harry nodded. Severus walked towards Harry and told him to open his mouth. When he had do so Severus put two drops of the liquid on his tongue.  
  
Within a couple minutes Harry began to feel a little out of sorts, as if he had been drinking some good wine and the world went a little fuzzy. Then he heard the first question asked him. "Are you Harry Potter?" Dumbledore's voice sounded so far away and Harry was compelled to answer him.  
  
"Yes." Harry said in a weak voice.  
  
"Do you who took you from the Dursley's home?" asked Dumbledore.  
  
"No."  
  
"Do you know where you have been for the last month?"  
  
"No." Said Harry. Dumbledore stopped to think of another question he might ask and as the Headmaster was thinking Remus took the opportunity to ask a question of his own. A question that was burning in the back of his mind since he saw Harry reaction to Ron's show of affection.  
  
"Harry did the Dursley's abuse you?" Remus said quickly, because if he didn't he might not have gotten it out. Dumbledore and Severus both looked at him as if the man had gone crazy.  
  
"Yes." The boy said weakly. Remus closed his and took a deep breath in. He was glad that the Dursleys where dead, because if they weren't then he would have gone there right that minute and killed him all himself, and he didn't really want to go to Azkaban right when he had a chance to help Harry.  
  
"Well I guess that is all we really need to ask him." Said Severus and Dumbledore agreed with the potion master's judgment.  
  
"I agree. We should be getting back to the feast and start the sorting ceremony." Said the Headmaster. Severus went over to Harry to get him to come with them back to the Great Hall. After a few more minutes the four of them walked through the doors to the hall and Dumbledore motion for Harry to take his seat at the Gryffindor table.  
  
Harry quietly walked over to the Gryffindor table and took his normal seat next to Ron where there was an empty space before. Still Harry talked to no one. Dumbledore and the two Professors went up to the head table and took their seats. Harry could feel everyone look at him even when his head remained down not talking to anyone.  
  
"I know this is a shock to most of you, but as you can see Harry Potter is alive and well, and with us now. Let all welcome him back." Said Dumbledore and a loud clapping went up as most everyone in the hall cheered for Harry being alive. Still Harry head remained down not talking to anyone.  
  
"First before we bring in the first years we will get the names of the eight people who with be resorted into new houses, and the sorting hat with call the names." Announced Dumbledore as he gestured toward the sorting hat sitting on the three-legged chair.  
  
"I will call the eight forward to receive a new place at Hogwarts." Said the sorting hat. "When your name is called come forth and try me on. The first will be, Terry Brook." A Ravenclaw boy stood from his table and walked toward the chair. When he sat down he put on the hat and it took a minute before the hat called out a house. "Gryffindor!" It yelled. Terry walked over to Gryffindor and sat down by Dean and Seamus. Harry noticed that when he sat down on the bench the Ravenclaw emblem suddenly changed to a Gryffindor one.  
  
"Next will be John Boyer." A Slytherin seventh year stood up and walked forward. When the hat was on his head it shouted "Ravenclaw!" John took his place at the Ravenclaw table. "Susan Bones." Susan walked shyly up to the chair and sat the hat on her head. "Ravenclaw!" The hat yelled. Susan quickly took her seat.  
  
"Now I will call Cassandra Knight." A sixth year Gryffindor stood and was resorted into Hufflepuff. "Emily Johnson." A sixth year Slytherin stood and was also sorted into Hufflepuff. Then there was a seventh year Ravenclaw who went up and tried the hat on only to be put back into his own house.  
  
"Lastly I will call Harry Potter." Everyone seemed to hold their breath, wonder where the Boy-Who-Lived-Then-Died-Only -To-Come-Back was going to be place. Harry slowly stood up and walked to the front of the hall. He picked up the hat and saw down on the chair, looking at the old worn hat in front of him. Then careful placed the hat on his head.  
  
"Ah mister Potter back again, well, well, well, I see that you have changed from the first time I saw you. Yes, defiantly changed and I also see that you will not fight my choice this time, very well. Well then better be." The Great Hall was absolutely still and silent, but soon the silence would be broken when the hat shouted. "Slytherin!" 


	11. Chapter Ten: Letters and Dreams

A/N: I am very sorry for the long wait, but a lot of things have happened in the time between. First my computer crashed taking a lot of stuff with it, I am glad I had a lot of stuff on backup disks. Then I quit my job and had to find a new one. Also I have been feeling really sick a lot and I went to the doctor and he said I have cancer so my energy and creative thought have been down, but now I am putting a real effort into it so that I can finish all my stuff and post it so that you guys don't have to wait forever. Hope you enjoy this chapter.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Heaven bend to take my hand,  
And lead me through the fire,  
Be the long awaited answer,  
To a long and painful fight,  
But somewhere along the way,  
I got caught up in all there was to offer,  
But the cost was so much more then I could bear,  
  
Though I've tried I've fallen,  
I have sunk so low,  
I messed up,  
Better I should know,  
So don't come round here and,  
Tell me I told you so.  
  
-Fallen; Sarah McLachlan  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Hate is a Powerful Thing  
Chapter Ten: Letters and Dreams  
MostEvilKitten  
  
He did know exactly how he got to the Slytherin table, but all of a sudden he was sitting there staring down at his golden plate listening to the hushed whispers of the people around him and the shouting of the people at the other tables. The Professors were busy trying to silence the students so that the feast could begin, but they were having a very hard time at it.  
  
No one was silencing to them they were all busy yelling at the hat for placing Harry into a house that was obviously not meant for him. He was a Gryffindor, and not some slimy, two-faced Slytherin. That house would tear him to pieces before morning. They would serve him up to the Dark Lord on a silver platter (Harry secretly wished for that, so that he didn't have to face anyone in the school, he didn't think he could bare them).  
  
Harry could feel all their eyes on him, and the one he could feel them most was Dumbledore's pricing stare. It bored into him straight into his soul, searching, but for what Harry didn't know. The Headmaster was the only other person who knew that the sorting hat wanted to put Harry into Slytherin house in his first year, so why was he so surprised now?  
  
Another thing that seemed curious to Harry was Professor Snape who didn't seem to incredible surprise at this interesting development. Harry thought that his greasy git of a Potion Professor would be yell at the top of his lungs for this 'outrage' to be corrected, but Snape just sat there looking at him with a thoughtful expression.  
  
It took a while but finally the students calmed down enough for the Headmaster to continue the speech before the feast. "Again I would like to remind all the houses that if any of your new housemates are harmed in any way they will be returned to there old house and all the point that the offending house had will be taken away and the persons in question will be expelled."  
  
There was a pause and a pointed look to the Slytherin house, which told all of the snakes that they would be watched closely, like they needed that look to tell them that. They knew that it would be madness to harm The-Boy- Who-Lived now; I mean they weren't stupid; they are Slytherins!! No one really caught the other pointed look Dumbledore gave to the Gryffindors, who had been sneering at the Slytherins with a certain amount of malice. Then the Headmaster continued his speech.  
  
"As I remind you returning students and warn the first years that the forbidden forest is still off limits to all students. There are also some new things on the forbidden list that is in Mr. Flich's office. Please go and look at it in your free time. Now I would like to welcome back one of our past Defense Against the Dark Arts Professors, Professor Remus Lupin." There was hushed whispered that spread through the Great Hall like wild fire. "Yes he is a werewolf but we have taken all precautions for his being here so there is no need to worry. Now lets feast."  
  
The Headmaster finished and the food appeared on the tables and everyone dug into the bowls of mashed potatoes and platters of roast beef, everyone except Harry. He sat in his chair staring down at his plate oblivious to what was going on around him. He didn't notice the Slytherins plotting about him, nor did he notice the worried looks that the Gryffindors were shooting him.  
  
He just stayed there staring down at his plate not looking at anything, nor speaking to anyone. He was lost in thought, thought about what happened over the summer, thought about where he might have been during the time everyone thought him dead, and thought about Tom and how much he missed him, but these thoughts were soon interrupted by a familiar voice that cut through the fog of his mind.  
  
"Mr. Potter?" a voice said gently, rather more gently that Harry had ever heard it before. Harry looked up into midnight black eyes that looked down at him questioning. "The feast is over Mr. Potter and everyone has left. It is time for you to go to your new common room." Said Professor Snape and Harry sighed and nodded at him. "I will show you to the common room and address the other Slytherins about you." The Professor said as Harry stood up and walked behind the billowing robed figure.  
  
"Professor?" Harry questioned. "I don't have anything for school. No books or clothes. I am afraid I. er. lost mine old things."  
  
"What are you talking about boy?" Snape said get back into his evil greasy git role. "All of your things are up in your trunk in you new dorm new. All except your owl. The elves couldn't find her on the train."  
  
"She's dead." Harry said so slowly that Snape almost missed it, but he didn't miss the saddened tone of the boy's voice.  
  
"I'm sorry Mr. Potter." The Professor said quickly and looked around to see if anyone had heard his little off character remark. Harry looked as if he didn't hear it, but Snape knew better than that. The boy had heard his remark, but he was in such a fog of memory that it hadn't sunk in yet.  
  
They traveled through the bowels of the castle, into the dungeons where the infamous lair of the snakes lay. Few traveled down here, if they weren't a Slytherin, they would have to be crazy to. It was humored that if anyone who wasn't a true Slytherin would be cursed if they went anywhere near the Slytherin dorms, and they was where they were going at this moment.  
  
Harry began to remember the trek down to the Slytherin dorms from his second year when Ron and he went down to the Slytherin dorms with Draco Malfoy to find out if Malfoy was the heir of Slytherin and had opened the Camber of Secrets or not. They came to the wall that was the held the opening to the common room and stopped.  
  
Snape looked down at Harry to see if he was paying attention to where they had gone to and if he was going to hear the password, because he didn't want to have to say it twice outside the common room. The chances of a person from another house over hearing the password would become great every time someone said the password outside the common room. That was why the password changed at least once every two days, if not more.  
  
It confused the first years to no end, but they got use to it and it taught them to be more careful with what they wanted to hold secret. The Slytherins had to learn this lesson better and another house, because they were in the most danger of Dark Wizards and Witches wanting to recruit them than everyone else, and if they didn't want to be blackmailed into serving a Dark Lord they had to be infinitely more careful about their secrets.  
  
"Veritas." Whispered to the wall only loud enough for Harry to hear and the wall slowly opened to revel the dark common room of the Slytherin house. Harry remembered think that this place was way to dark and cold for him in his second year, but now it seemed to fit his mood perfectly. Snape went through the portal and Harry followed close behind him, into a room filled with Slytherins of all ages, and hushed whispers.  
  
They all turned to see who had come into the common room when they heard the wall open. Only to find two people, one of which their whispers were about. Most could think how Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived, the Savor of the Wizarding world, the bane of the Dark Lord, had gotten into the house of the snakes, but there he was standing before them in robes with the patch of Slytherin on his chest. Some people were so enraged about this that they were contemplating way to get rid of this boy even thought they would be expelled for the mire thought of it.  
  
Where other were thinking of way to use this to their advantage. Either given him to the Dark Lord so that they could be insured a high ranking in the Death Eaters or thinking of way to turn him to the dark side of magic. A person thinking of turning Harry now sat in the corner watching his housemates with a certain amount of interest. Wondering what each one was thinking.  
  
He could tell which ones were plotting Harry's death, he could see their faces twisted in anger and hate, the other that were watching the boy in interest were the ones who were thinking of using Harry for their own good. But there was one face in the crowd that was not like the other. This one show a worried expression mixed with what seemed to be sympathy. Draco watch that face for a while before realizing exactly who it was.  
  
Pansy sat in the far corner watching the dark boy at the door with a saddened expression. Draco watched her for a few minutes before she realized he was watching her and her expression changed to one of cool passiveness.  
  
"Attention to all of you!" Snape said in an even tone that had no hint of emotion at all. "We are going to win the house cup this year so there will be absolutely no misbehaving this year and no one is to even think of harming our new Slytherin, or they will answer to me!"  
  
Everyone looked up at their head of house with a little fear in their eyes, before he turned and left leaving a confused and haunted looking Harry Potter standing at the door looking out over the sea of faces. Draco sat back watching his housemates wondering who would be the first person to greet the boy.  
  
It ended up being a seventh year prefect. He greeted Harry and showed him to the fifth year dorms. Draco sat in the corner watching and listening a bit more until another prefect came up to him with a note from Professor Snape, that told Draco that the Professor wanted to see him in his office immediately.  
  
Draco ideally wondered what he had done to warrant the urgent tone of the Professor's letter as he made his way through the dungeons to his head of house's office not far form the common room. When Draco came to the black wooden door he took in a calming breath before pushing open the door.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The seventh year prefect had shown him to his new dorm room, which wasn't too different from the Gryffindor room, except that there was no windows and instead of the bring red and gold of Gryffindor there was the calm silver and green of Slytherin.  
  
There were five different four posters with green hangings. The beds were made with green coverlets and silver silk sheets, which made Harry laugh mentally. There was a wardrobe next to each of the beds along with writing tables. Harry found which one was his bed when he spotted an unfamiliar trunk, which had his initials on it. He opened the trunk to find one set of uniform and robes, all the books he needed for the year, a nice set of potion instruments, his father's invisibility cloak, the photo album he got from Hagrid in his first year, and his wand, but he couldn't remember buying any of this new stuff, and he could think of who would get them for him.  
  
He looked down at the trunk for a bit more before taking off his robe, socks, shoes and shirt and climbing into bed with nothing but his trousers on. He quickly fell asleep being exhausted both physically and emotionally from the day's events. Soon he was dreaming, but it wasn't a good dream no it was a nightmare.  
  
He was back at the Dursley's house locked in the smallest bedroom. Everything was quite, maybe a little too quite. He looked around the room where he found Hedwig's old cage sitting on his desk empty. That brought a tear to his eye and then he was lost in the memory of his lost bird, his friend, but they were soon interrupted when there was a crash from downstairs.  
  
Then he heard his cousin's voice come through the floorboards. "Daddy, it was that freak. He is using his freak stuff and made me drop mom's favorite china."  
  
The there came the most frightening sound he ever heard, his Uncle's heavy footsteps coming quickly up the stairs. "No!" he said as his heart seemed to stop for a moment and he couldn't breath.  
  
"Boy!" Roared his Uncle as he heard the locks on the outside of his door being unlocked. Harry ran to the farthest corner of his room and squeezed into a small ball trying to become as small as he could before his Uncle got in the room.  
  
When his Uncle opened the door the light from the hallway slanted in from behind him and he couldn't see his Uncle very well, but it had to be Him, because there was only two people that could loom over him like that, his Uncle and Voldemort, but Voldemort wouldn't be in the Dursley's house.  
  
"Boy! You are going to learn your lesson one way or the other and I know just the way to teach you!" his Uncle said and slipped into the room just enough so that Harry could see his face. There was a predatory gleam in his Uncle's eye, and Harry knew that gleam.  
  
"No!" Harry cried out and turned trying to get away from his Uncle, but there was nowhere to go and all he could do was scratch at the walls as if he could scratch right through them and make his escape, but there was no escape for Harry. "No no no no no no." he chanted as he franticly tried to get out.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Draco pushed open the door to Professor Snape's office to find the man sitting behind his desk reading a long piece of parchment. Snape looked up at him briefly before motioning for him to enter and going back to his parchment, looking as though he wanted to finish a certain part before he addressed the blond Slytherin.  
  
Draco walked quickly up to a chair on the other side of the desk from Snape and sat down waiting patiently. It was a couple moments before the Professor finished what he was doing and looked up again at Draco. "Draco how was your summer?"  
  
"Fine sir." He said quickly.  
  
"Now Draco you know you can tell me anything. I am your Godfather after all." Said the Professor giving Draco a critical look.  
  
"I know Professor, but I am telling you the truth, it was a fine summer. Not too much to do and not to little. It was like every other summer before it, except."  
  
"Except?" Snape echoed.  
  
"Well sire, except that you didn't visit us this summer. I missed your visit."  
  
"Ah yes. Well I had a very busy schedule this summer that kept me from visiting Malfoy Manor." Said Snape and Draco knew what he was talking about, the Dark Lord. His father was busier this summer than he had ever been before.  
  
"Is there any other reason you called me here other than to see how my summer was sir?" asked Draco. Snape looked at Draco as though he was choosing his words carefully.  
  
"Yes Draco, I have a request." Said Snape before getting up from his chair and heading for a side door, to where the potions Professor kept his extra stores of bottled potions. Snape entered the room and when he came back out he was carrying a rather large box.  
  
"What is this about?" Draco looked at the box as if it was going to bit him.  
  
"I want you to kept a eye on our new Slytherin for me." Said Snape and he handed the box to Draco, who took it gingerly.  
  
"This will help me keep an eye on Potter?" question Draco.  
  
"I a way. I have come into some interesting information and I know that Mr. Potter is going to need some of the things that are in this box." Said Snape, and Draco opened his mouth to say something else, but before he could Snape dismissed him quickly.  
  
Draco got up slowly, gingerly holding on to the box and headed for the door, but stop short before saying his goodbyes. He was half way to the common room when he opened the box to find some Dreamless Sleep Potion and some odd healing potions in the box. Draco looked at him questioningly, before shaking his head and continuing back to the Slytherin dorms.  
  
He walked throw the almost empty common room quickly. Everyone was either asleep or getting ready for bed. When he got to the room he shared with the rest of the fifth year Slytherin boys he couldn't help but notice the extra bed that lay next to his. In this bed lay a very pale Harry Potter. He looked to pale and haunted even in his sleep, which made Draco wonder exactly what had happened to him over the summer.  
  
Sighing, Draco put the box of potions carefully on his writing table before going to his trunk and looking for a piece of parchment, quill and ink. He was going to write his father as he had always done when he first got to school, to tell him of anything interesting that had happened on the train ride there and which students had been sorted into 'The only noble and proud house at Hogwarts'.  
  
He sat and stared at his parchment for some times before actually putting pen to paper as it were. He wrote in his best penmanship as every Malfoy should write when corresponding to anyone, even and especially to his own father. He told his father about the train ride and finding Harry Potter in an empty compartment, how the boy was alive and seemingly in good health. He also wrote about how the boy looking as if he had been beaten and left for dead by this unknown person who took him.  
  
He then wrote of the results of the resorting ceremony and how Harry Potter was resorted into Slytherin, recounting every detail he could remember from the Great Hall and also in the common room when he watched everyone's reactions to the ex-Gryffindor first appearance in the Slytherin's common room. He was about to write further about the meeting with his Godfather, but suddenly a sound interrupted his train of thought.  
  
The sound was coming from the bed next to his, Harry's bed. Draco stopped the sound of his writing and turned his head listening. It sounded as if the boy was having a bad dream. Draco stood up and walked over to Harry's bed and opened to the hangings to find that Harry seemed to been sweating slightly. He was shifting in his bed as if trying to get away from something, but like in any dream you can seem to get away.  
  
Draco rolled his eyes and then grabbed a hold of Harry and shook him light. "Wake up." Draco said, but the only response he got was Harry chanting one word. No.  
  
Draco shook him a little hard and told him to wake up a little louder. This time he got a different response that startled him a little. Harry began to shake by himself and jump out of bed, tumbling to the floor and then scattering away as if he was trying to get as far away from Draco as he could, but only managing to crawl under his writing table and hitting the wall. Harry's started to scream at the top of his lungs.  
  
"No, Uncle Vernon please don't." Harry scream, with woke the boys in the room that were sleeping and a moment later the door opened and Jonathan Pinthe, the seventh year boys prefect, came running into the room to see what was happening only to stop and staring in horror at the pale, frightened boy under his writing table.  
  
Harry seemed to be clawing at the wall trying to get away form his invisible attacker and scream for his Uncle to stop whatever he was doing. Not long after Harry started scream almost all of the Slytherin students were clamoring at the door of the fifth year boys' room to see what was happening and if someone was killing that stupid Gryffindor who dare come down to the Slytherin sanctuary. Some whispered of the rumored curse that would be put on anyone that wasn't a true Slytherin who came down here as other whispered that Draco had gone insane and was killing Harry, but none of them had it right.  
  
Harry was having a particularly bad nightmare about what his Uncle did to him over the summer, and Draco knew it. He could still see the unhealed cuts and bruises that littered the boy's body and he heard the boy cry for his Uncle to stop. It was only just dawning on him what could of happen to Harry by his Uncle's hand that would incite such a reaction when there was a commotion from the door and Professor Snape swept into the rush and took a moment to asset the situation before rushing to Harry's side and calming the boy down enough to get him to take a calming potion.  
  
Moments later Snape had Harry back into his bed and asleep again, before turning to the crowd and telling the prefects to get everyone back to bed, before they were all punished for being out of bed at this late hour. Most people took a minute or two to stop gaping at what had happened before moving on back to their rooms. Some of the prefect had to take an hour to calm down some of the frightened first years before going to bed themselves.  
  
Draco stood next to Harry's bed watching Snape calm the boy down as the other boys in the room dropped back onto their beds and quickly feel asleep again as if nothing happened. It was a while before Snape left the room, but not before he gave Draco a pointed look, trying to tell him something, but Draco was in too much shock to really understand what it could have meant.  
  
When Draco finally came out of his stupor he entered to his letter to his father and feverishly wrote down what had just happened. When Draco had finished he read over his letter then quickly sign and sealed it. He gave it to his owl and it was off to his father, before he realized that he totally forgot about telling his father about his meeting with Snape. He brushed it off as nothing while he changed for bed. When he got into his bed he quickly fell asleep and didn't dream all night.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
When Harry got back to asleep he dreamed, but this dream was better than the last. He was back in his field of green grass and silver flowers with clear blue skies overhead. He was crying when Tom found him.  
  
"Harry?" Tom's asked tentatively. "Harry what's the matter?"  
  
"He was back Tom. He was hurting me again."  
  
"Oh Harry I am sorry."  
  
"You said that He. wouldn't come back.. That he couldn't. hurt me anymore!" Harry said hiccupping from crying.  
  
"But Harry that was only a dream. He can only hurt you in a dream if you let him." Tom said gently. "Next time He is in your dream I want you to do something for me. I want you to kill him."  
  
"But." Harry interrupted not wanting to hurt anyone, but Tom also interrupted him.  
  
"No! No buts! You have to do this for your own good, so that He can't hurt you anymore. Anyways it only a dream, its not like you would be killing him for real." Said Tom with a shy smile. Harry looked up at Tom wiping away his tear and giving Tom a small smile.  
  
"Okay Tom anything for you." Said Harry and somewhere in the real world and not Harry's dream world, Voldemort smiled cruelly.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Response to reviewers  
  
Gwennie: Thanks for offering, and I do need a beta, so can you read over my chapters and correct them for me please.  
  
Thanks to: Dir en Grey, selua, Kateri1, Cassa-Andra, Meamz, Lord Master Omega, wanderingwolf, Erin, jes9 and Lady Phoenix Slytherin for review and a extra thanks to Jade29 for that correction, it has been fixed. 


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